Mysticism Christian and Buddhist

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY

CENTRAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL
LIBRARY

WORLD PERSPECTIVES

— io —-

Mysticism

CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST

WORLD PERSPECTIVES

Planned and Edited by Ruth Nan da Anshcn

BOARD OF EDITORS

Niels Bohr, Richard Courant, Hu Shih
Ernest Jackh, Robert M. Maclver
Jacques Maritain, J. Robert Oppenheimcr
Radhakrishnan, Alexander Sachs
I. I. Rabi
Jacques Maritain
Approaches to Cod
Walter Gropius
Scope of Total Architecture
Radhakrishnan
Recovery oj Faith
Brock Chisholm
Can Nations Learn to Learn ?

Lewis Mumford
The Tran formations of Alan
Konrad Adenauer
World Indivisible
V. G. Childe
Society and Knowledge
Fred Hoyle
Man and Materialism
Erich Fromm
The Art oj Loving
Paul Tillich
Dynamics of Faith

WORLD PERSPECTIVES

DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI

Mysticism

Christian and Buddhist

Ruskin House

GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD

MUSEUM STREFT LONDON

First Published In Great Britain in 1957

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Contents

PREFACE

SECTION ONE

1 Mcister Eckhart and Buddhism

2 The Basis of Buddhist Philosophy

3 ‘A Little Point ’ and Satori

4 Living in the Light of Eternity

APPENDICES

5 Transmigration

6 Crucifixion and Enlightenment

SECTION TWO

7 Kono-mama (‘ I Am That I Am ’)

APPENDICES

8 Notes on ‘ Namu-amida-butsu ’

9 Rennyo’s Letters

io From Saichi’s Journals

PACE VI

3

36

76

93

”5

129

*43

161

167

*74

Preface

This book has no pretension to be a thorough, systematic
study of the subject. It is more or less a collection of studies
the author has written from time to time in the course of his
readings, especially of Meister Eckhart as representative of
Christian mysticism. For Eckhart’s thoughts come most closely
to those of Zen and Shin. Zen and Shin superficially differ:
one is known as Jiriki, the “self-power” school, while the-
other is Tariki, the “other-power” school. But there is some¬
thing common to both, which will be felt by the reader. Eck¬
hart, Zen, and Shin thus can be grouped together as belonging
to the great school of mysticism. The underlying chain of rela¬
tionship among the three may not be always obvious in the
following pages. The author’s hope, however, is that they are
provocative enough to induce Western scholars to take up the
subject for their study.

The author wishes to acknowledge his debts to the two
English translations of Meister Eckhart, the first by C. dc B.
Evans and the second by Raymond B. Blakney, from which
he has very liberally quoted.

Daisetz T. Suzuki

New York , 1955

Mysticism

CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST

I.

Meister Eckhart 1 and Buddhism

i

IN THE following pages I attempt to call the reader's at¬
tention to the closeness of Meister Eckhart's way of thinking
to that of Mahayana Buddhism, especially of Zen Buddhism.
The attempt is only a tentative and sketchy one, far from be¬
ing systematic and exhaustive. But I hope the reader will find
something in it which evokes his curiosity enough to under¬
take further studies of this fascinating topic.

When I first read—which was more than a half century
ago—a little book containing a few of Meister Eckhart’s ser¬
mons, they impressed me profoundly, for I never expected that
any Christian thinker ancient or modern could or would
cherish such daring thoughts as expressed in those sermons.
While I do not remember which sermons made up the con-

«There are two Englijh translations of Eckhart, one British and the
other American. The British, in two volume*, is by C. dc B. Evan*,
published by John M. Watkins, London. 1924. The American translation
is by Raymond B. Blakncy, published by Harper & Brothers, New York,
1941. Neither of them is a complete translation of all of Eckhart* known
works in German. Franz Pfeiffer published in 1857 a collection of Eck¬
hart's works, chiefly in the High German dialect of Strassburg of the
fourteenth century. This edition was reprinted in 1914. Blakney’s and
Evans’ translations are mainly based on the Pfeiffer edition. In the pres¬
ent book, "Blakney" refers to the Blakncy translation and "Evans" to the
Evans, Vol. I, while "Pfeiffer" means his German edition of 1914.

3

4 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

tents of the little book, the ideas expounded there closely
approached Buddhist thoughts, so closely indeed, that one
could stamp them almost definitely as coming out of Buddhist
speculations. As far as I can judge, Eckhart seems to be an
extraordinary “Christian.”

While refraining from going into details we can say at
least this: Eckhart’s Christianity is unique and has many
points which make us hesitate to classify him as belonging to
the type we generally associate with rationalized modernism or
with conservative traditionalism. He stands on his own experi¬
ences which emerged from a rich, deep, religious personality.
He attempts to reconcile them with the historical type of
Christianity modeled after legends and mythology. He tries to
give an “esoteric” or inner meaning to them, and by so doing
he enters fields which were not touched by most of his his¬
torical predecessors.

First, let me give you the views Eckhart has on time and
creation. These are treated in his sermon delivered on the
commemoration day for St. Germaine. He quotes a sentence
from Ecclesiasticus: “In his days he pleased God and was
found just.” Taking up first the phrase “In his days,” he in¬
terprets it according to his own understanding:

. . . there are more days than one. There is the soul’s day and
God’s day. A day, whether six or seven ago, or more than six
thousand years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday.
Why? Because all time is contained in the present Now-moment.
Time comes of the revolution of the heavens and day began with
the first revolution. The soul’s day falls within this time and
consists of the natural light in which things are seen. God’s day,
however, is the complete day, comprising both day and night.

It is the real Now-moment, which for the soul is eternity’s day,

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 5

on which the Father begets his only begotten Son and the soul
is reborn in God. 2

The soul’s day and God’s day are different. In her natural day
the soul knows all things above time and place; nothing is far or
near. And that is why I say, this day all things are of equal rank.
To talk about the world as being made by God to-morrow, yes¬
terday, would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all
things in this present now. Time gone a thousand years ago is
now as present and as near to God as this very instant. The soul
who is in this present now, in her the Father bears his one-
begotten Son and in that same birth the soul is born back into
God. It is one birth; as fast as she is reborn into God the Father
is begetting his only Son in her. 2

God the Father and the Son have nothing to do with time.
Generation is not in time, but at the end and limit of time. In
the past and future movements of things, your heart flits about;
it is in vain that you attempt to know eternal things; in divine
things, you should be occupied intellectually. . . . 4

Again, God loves for his own sake, acts for his own sake: that
means that he loves for the sake of love and acts for the sake
of action. It cannot be doubted that God would never have
begot his Son in eternity if [his idea of] creation were other than
[his act of] creation. Thus God created the world so that he
might keep on creating. The past and future are both far from
God and alien to his way. 9

From these passages we see that the Biblical story of Crea¬
tion is thoroughly contradicted; it has not even a symbolic
meaning in Eckhart, and, further, his God is not at all like

2 Blakney, p. 212.
s Evans, p. 209.

4 Blakney, p. 292.

• Ibid., p. 62 .

6 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

the God conceived by most Christians. God is not in time
mathematically enumerable. His creativity is not historical,
not accidental, not at all measurable. It goes on continuously
without cessation with no beginning, with no end. It is not an
event of yesterday or today or tomorrow, it comes out of time-
lessness, of nothingness, of Absolute Void. God’s work is
always done in an absolute present, in a timeless “now which
is time and place in itself.” God’s work Is sheer love, utterly
free from all forms of chronology and teleology. The idea of
God creating the world out of nothing, in an absolute present,
and therefore altogether beyond the control of a serial time
conception will not sound strange to Buddhist ears. Perhaps
they may find it acceptable as reflecting their doctrine of
Emptiness (funyata).

n

Below are further quotations from Eckhart giving his views
on “being,” “life,” “work,” etc.:

Being is God. . . . God and being arc the same—or God has
being from another and thus himself is not God. . . . Every¬
thing that is has the fact of its being through being and from
being. Therefore, if being is something different from God, a
thing has its being from something other than God. Besides,
there is nothing prior to being, because that which confers being
creates and is a creator. To create is to give being out of nothing.'

Eckhart is quite frequently metaphysical and makes one
wonder how his audience took to his sermons—an audience

which is supposed to have been very unscholarly, being igno¬
rant of Latin and all the theologies written in it. This prob-
• Ibid., p. 278.

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM ' 7

lem of being and God’s creating the world out of nothing
must have puzzled them very much indeed. Even the scholars
might have found Eckhart beyond their understanding, espe¬
cially when we know that they were not richly equipped with
the experiences which Eckhart had. Mere thinking or logical
reasoning will never succeed in clearing up problems of deep
religious significance. Eckhart's experiences are deeply, basi¬
cally, abundantly rooted in God as Being which is at once
being and not-bcing: he sees in the “meanest” thing among
God’s creatures all the glories of his is-ness ( isticheit ). The
Buddhist enlightenment is nothing more than this experience
of is-ness or suchness ( tathata ), which in itself has all the
possible values (guna) we humans can conceive.

God’s characteristic is being. The philosopher says one creature
is able to give another life. For in being, mere being, lies all that
is at all. Being is the first name. Defect means lack of being. Our
whole life ought to be being. So far as our life is being, so far it
is in God. So far as our life is feeble but taking it as being, it
excels anything life can ever boast. I have no doubt of this, that if
the soul had the remotest notion of what being means she would
never waver from it for an instant. The most trivial thing per¬
ceived in God, a flower for example as espied in God, would be
a thing more perfect than the universe. The vilest thing present
in God as being is better than angelic knowledge/

This passage may sound too abstract to most readers. The
sermon is said to have been given on the commemoration day
of the “blessed martyrs who were slain with the swords.” Eck¬
hart begins with his ideas about death and suffering which
come to an end like everything else that belongs to this world.

T Evans, p. 206.

8 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

He then proceeds to tell us that “it behooves us to emulate
the dead in dispassion (nihl belriieben ) towards good and ill
and pain of every kind,” and he quotes St. Gregory: “No one
gets so much of God as the man who is thoroughly dead,”
because “death gives them [martyrs] being,—they lost their
life and found their being.” Eckhart’s allusion to the flower as
espied in God reminds us of Nansen’s interview with Rikko
in which the Zen master also brings out a flower in the monas¬
tery courtyard.

It is when I encounter such statements as these that I grow
firmly convinced that the Christian experiences are not after
all different from those of the Buddhist. Terminology is all
that divides us and stirs us up to a wasteful dissipation of
energy. We must however weigh the matter carefully and see
whether there is really anything that alienates us from one
another and whether there is any basis for our spiritual edifi¬
cation and for the advancement of a world culture.

When God made man, he put into the soul his equal, his active,
everlasting masterpiece. It was so great a work that it could not
be otherwise than the soul and the soul could not be otherwise
than the work of God. God's nature, his being, and the Godhead
all depend on his work in the soul. Blessed, blessed be God that
he does work in the soul and that he loves his work! That work
is love and love is God. God loves himself and his own nature,
being and Godhead, and in the love he has for himself he loves
all creatures, not as creatures but as God. The love God bears
himself contains his love for the whole world.*

Eckhart’s statement regarding God’s self-love which “con¬
tains his love for the whole world” corresponds in a way to
the Buddhist idea of universal enlightenment. When Buddha
• Blakney, pp. 224-5.

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 9

attained the enlightenment, it is recorded, he perceived that
all beings non-sentient as well as sentient were already in the
enlightenment itself. The idea of enlightenment may make
Buddhists appear in some respects more impersonal and meta¬
physical than Christians. Buddhism thus may be considered
more scientific and rational than Christianity which is heavily
laden with all sorts of mythological paraphernalia. The move¬
ment is now therefore going on among Christians to denude
the religion of this unnecessary historical appendix. While it
is difficult to predict how far it will succeed, there are in every
religion some elements which may be called irrational. They
arc generally connected with the human craving for love. The
Buddhist doctrine of enlightenment is not after all such a cold
system of metaphysics as it appears to some people. Love
enters also into the enlightenment experience as one of its
constituents, for otherwise it could not embrace the totality of
existence. The enlightenment does not mean to run away from
the world, and to sit cross-legged at the peak of the mountain,
to look down calmly upon a bomb-struck mass of humanity.
It has more tears than we imagine.

Thou shalt know him [God] without image, without semblance
and without means.—“But for me to know God thus, with noth¬
ing between, I must be all but he, he all but me.”—I say, God
must be very I, I very God, so consummately one that this he
and this I are one “is," in this is-ness working one work eternally;
but so long as this he and this I, to wit, God and the soul, are not
one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with nor be
one with that he.*

What is life? God's being is my life, but if it is so, then what
is God’s must be mine and what is mine God’s. God’s is-ness is

9 Evanj, p. 247.

io mysticism: Christian and buddhist

my is-ness, and neither more nor less. The just Jive eternally with
God, on a par with God, neither deeper nor higher. All their
work is done by God and God's by them. 10

Going over these quotations, we feel that it was natural that
orthodox Christians of his day accused Eckhart as a “heretic”
and that he defended himself. Perhaps it is due to our psycho¬
logical peculiarities that there are always two opposing tenden¬
cies in the human way of thinking and feeling; extrovert and
introvert, outer and inner, objective and subjective, exoteric
and esoteric, traditional and mystical. The opposition between
these two tendencies or temperaments is often too deep and
strong for any form of reconciliation. This is what makes Eck¬
hart complain about his opponents not being able to grasp his
point. He would remonstrate: “Could you see with my heart
you would understand my words, but, it is true, for the truth
itself has said it.” n Augustine is however tougher than Eck¬
hart: “What is it to me though any comprehend not this!” 13

in

One of Eckhart’s heresies was his pantheistic tendency. He
seemed to put man and God on an equal footing: “The
Father begets his Son in me and I am there in the same Son
and not another.” ,J While it is dangerous to criticize Eckhart
summarily as a pantheist by picking one or two passages at
random from his sermons, there is no doubt that his sermons

10 Blakney, p. 180.

11 Evans, p. 38.

11 Quoted by Eckhart, Blakney, p. 305.

»* C/. Blakney, p. 214: “The soul that lives in the present Now-
moment is the soul in which the Father begets his only begotten Son and
in that birth the soul ij bom again into God. It is one birth, as fast as
she is reborn into God the Father is begetting his only Son in her.” (The
last sentence is from Evans, p. 209.)

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM II

contain many thoughts approaching pantheism. But unless the
critics are a set of ignorant misinterpreters with perhaps an
evil intention to condemn him in every way as a heretic, a
fair-minded judge will notice that Eckhart everywhere in his
sermons Is quite careful to emphasize the distinction between
the creature and the creator as in the following:

“Between the only begotten Son and the soul there is no dis¬
tinction.” This is true. For how could anything white be distinct
from or divided from whiteness? Again, matter and form are one
in being; living and working. Yet matter is not, on this account,
form, or conversely. So in the proposition. A holy soul is one with
God, according to John 17:21. That they all may be one in us,
even as we arc one. Still the creature is not the creator, nor is
the just man God. 14

God and Godhead are as different as earth is from heaven.
Moreover I declare: the outward and the inward man arc as
different, too, as earth and heaven. God is higher, many thousand
miles. Yet God comes and goes. But to resume my argument:
God enjoys himself in all things. The sun sheds his light upon all
creatures, and anything he sheds his beams upon absorbs them,
yet he loses nothing of his brightness. 11

From this wc can see most decidedly that Eckhart was far
from being a pantheist. In this respect Mahayana Buddhism
is also frequently and erroneously stamped as pantheistic,
ignoring altogether a world of particulars. Some critics seem
to be ready and simple-minded enough to imagine that all
doctrines that arc not transcendentally or exclusively monothe¬
istic are pantheistic and that they arc for this reason perilous
to the advancement of spiritual culture.

14 Ibid., "The Defense,” p. 303.
ls Evans, pp. 142-3.

12 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

It is true that Eckhart insists on finding something of a
Godlike nature in each one of us, otherwise the birth of God's
only Son in the soul would be impossible and his creatures
would forever be something utterly alienated from him. As
long as God is love, as creator, he can never be outside the
creatures. But this cannot be understood as meaning the one¬
ness of one with the other in every possible sense. Eckhart
distinguishes between the inner man and the outer man and
what one sees and hears is not the same as the other. In a
sense therefore we can say that we are not living in an iden¬
tical world and that the God one conceives for oneself is
not at all to be subsumed under the same category as the God
for another. Eckharts God is neither transcendental nor
pantheistic.

God goes and comes, he works, he is active, he becomes all
the time, but Godhead remains immovable, imperturbable,
inaccessible. The difference between God and Godhead is that
between heaven and earth and yet Godhead cannot be him¬
self without going out of himself, that is, he is he because he
is not he. This “contradiction” is comprehended only by the
inner man, and not by the outer man, because the latter secs
the world through the senses and intellect and consequently
fails to experience the profound depths of Godhead.

Whatever influence Eckhart might have received from the
Jewish (Maimonides), Arabic (Avicenna), and Neoplatonic
sources, there is no doubt that he had his original views based
on his own experiences, theological and otherwise, and that
they were singularly Mahayanistic. Coomaraswamy is quite
right when he says:

Eckhart presents an astonishingly close parallel to Indian
modes of thought; some whole passages and many single sen-

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 1 3

tences read like a direct translation from Sanskrit. ... It is not
of course suggested that any Indian elements whatever are
actually present in Eckhart’s writing, though there arc some
Oriental factors in the European tradition, derived from neo-
Platonic and Arabic sources. But what is proved by analogies is
not the influence of one system of thought upon another, but the
coherence of the metaphysical tradition in the world and at all
times. 1 ®

IV

It is now necessary to examine Eckhart’s close kinship with
Mahayana Buddhism and especially with Zen Buddhism in
regard to the doctrine of Emptiness.

The Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness is unhappily greatly
misunderstood in the West. The word “emptiness” or “void”
seems to frighten people away, whereas when they use it
among themselves, they do not seem to object to it. While
some Indian thought is described as nihilistic, Eckhart has
never been accused of this, though he is not sparing in the
use of words with negative implications, such as “desert,”
“stillness,” “silence,” “nothingness.” Perhaps when these terms
arc used among Western thinkers, they are understood in con¬
nection with their historical background. But as soon as these
thinkers are made to plunge into a strange, unfamiliar system
or atmosphere, they lose their balance and condemn it as
negativistic or anarchistic or upholding escapist egoism.

According to Eckhart,

I have read many writings both of heathen philosophers and
sages, of the Old and the New Testaments, and I have earnestly
and with all diligence sought the best and the highest virtue

u The Transformation of Nature in Art, p. 201 .

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

14

whereby man may come most closely to God and wherein he may
once more become like the original image as he was in God when
there was yet no distinction between God and himself before God
produced creatures. And having dived into the basis of things to
the best of my ability I find that it is no other than absolute de¬
tachment ( abcgcscheidcnhcit) from everything that is created. It
was in this sense when our Lord said to Martha: “One thing is
needed,” which is to say: He who would be untouched and pure
needs just one thing, detachment. 17

What then is the content of absolute detachment? It cannot
be designated “as this or that,” as Eckhart says. It is pure
nothing (bloss niht), it is the highest point at which God can
work in us as he pleases.

Perfect detachment is without regard, without cither lowliness
or loftiness to creatures; it has no mind to be below nor yet to be
above; it is minded to be master of itself, loving none and hating
none, having neither likeness nor unlikeness, neither this nor that,
to any creature; the only thing it desires to be is to be one and
the same. For to be cither this or that is to want something. He
who is this or that is somebody; but detachment wants altogether
nothing. It leaves all things unmolested. 18

While Buddhist emphasis is on the emptiness of all “com¬
posite things” ( skandha) and is therefore metaphysical, Eck¬
hart here insists on the psychological significance of “pure
nothingness” so that God can take hold of the soul without
any resistance on the part of the individual. But from the
practical point of view the emptying of the soul making it

. ,T Blakney, "About Disinterest," p. 82. The translator prefers "dis¬
interest’ to "detachment" for abtgtschcidtnhtti. I really do not know
which is better. The German word seems to correspond to the Sanskrit
anabhinivesa or asanga (mushujaku in Japanese and wu chih chu in
Chinese), meaning "not attached," "not clinging to.”

18 Evans, with a little change, pp. 341-2.

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 15

selfless can never be thoroughly realized unless we have an
ontological understanding of the nature of things, that is, the
nothingness of creaturcly objects. For the created have no
reality; all creatures are pure nothing, for “all things were
made by him [God] and without him was not anything made”
(John, 1:3). Further, “If without God a creature has any
being however small, then God is not the cause of all things.
Besides, a creature will not be created, for creation is the
receiving of being from nothing.” 19 What could this mean?
How could any being come from nothing or non-being? Psy¬
chology herein inevitably turns to metaphysics. We here en¬
counter the problem of Godhead.

This problem was evidently not touched upon frequently
by Eckhart, for he warns his readers repeatedly, saying: “Now
listen: I am going to say something I have never said before.”
Then he proceeds: “When God created the heavens, the
earth, and creatures, he did no work; he had nothing to do-
he made no effort.” He then proceeds to say something about
Godhead, but he does not forget to state: “For yet again I
say a thing I never said before: God and Godhead are dif¬
ferent as earth is from heaven.” Though he often fails to make
a clear distinction between the two and would use “God”
where really “Godhead” is meant, his attempt to make a dis¬
tinction is noteworthy. With him God is still a something as
long as there is any trace of movement or work or of doing
something. When we come to the Godhead, we for the first
time find that it is the unmoved, a nothing where there is no
path {apada) to reach. It is absolute nothingness; therefore
it is the ground of being from where all beings come.

While I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river

19 Blakney, pp. 298-9.

1 6 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or
what I was doing: there was no one to ask me. When I was
flowing all creatures spake God. If I am asked, Brother Eckhart,
when went ye out of your house? Then I must have been in.
Even so do all creatures speak God. And why do they not speak
the Godhead? Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that
there is nothing to be said. God works, the Godhead does no
work, there is nothing to do; in it is no activity. It never en¬
visaged any work. God and Godhead are as different as active
and inactive. On my return to God, where I am formless, my
breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone
take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them
one in me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths,
into the well-spring of the Godhead, no one will ask me whence
I came or whither I went. No one missed me: God passes away. 30

What would Christians think of “the divine core of pure
(or absolute) stillness,” or of “the simple core which is the
still desert onto which no distinctions ever creep”? Eckhart is
in perfect accord with the Buddhist doctrine of Sunyata, when
he advances the notion of Godhead as “pure nothingness”
(tin bloss niht).

The notion of Godhead transcends psychology. Eckhart tells
us that he has made frequent references in his sermons to “a
light in the soul that is uncreated” and that “this light is not
satisfied by the simple still, motionless essence of the divine
being that neither gives nor takes. It is more interested in
knowing where this essence came from.” ” This “where” is
where “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost” have not
yet made their distinctions. To come in touch with this source
and to know what it is, that is to say, “to see my own face

Evans, p. 143.

*» Blakney, p. 247.

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 17

even before I was born” I must plunge into “the vast empti¬
ness of the Absolute Tao.”

“To see one’s face which one has even prior to his birth”
is ascribed to Hui-neng (Ycno, died 713), the sixth patriarch of
Zen Buddhism in China. This corresponds to Eckhart’s state¬
ment which he quotes as by “an authority”: “Blessed are the
pure in heart who leave everything to God now as they did
before ever they existed.” ” Those who have not tasted wine
in the cellar 13 may put in a question here: “How could we
talk about a man’s purity of heart prior to his existence? How
could we also talk about seeing our own face before we were
born?” Eckhart quotes St. Augustine: "There is a heavenly
door for the soul into the divine nature—where somethings
are reduced to nothing.” u Evidently we have to wait for the
heavenly door to open by our repeated or ceaseless knocking
at it when I am “ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving,
dark with light.” Everything comes out of this basic experi¬
ence and it is only when this is comprehended that we really
enter into the realm of emptiness where the Godhead keeps
our discriminatory mind altogether “emptied out to nothing-

v

What is the Absolute Tao?

Before we go on to the Zen conception of the “Absolute

Tao” or Godhead who sets itself up on “pure nothingness,”

it may be appropriate to comment on the Taoist conception

** Ibid., p. 89.

*»/*«., p. 216.

*♦ Ibid., p. 89.

3S "Von trktnntn kennelos und von minnt minntlos und von lithte
vinsltr." Pfeiffer, p. 491.

« Blakney, p. 88.

18 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

of it as expounded by Lao-tzu. He was one of the early
thinkers of China on philosophical subjects and the theme of
the TaoTe Ching ascribed to him is Tao.

Tao literally means “way” or “road” or “passage,” and in
more than one sense corresponds to the Sanskrit Dharma. It
is one of the key terms in the history of Chinese thought.
While Taoism derives its name from this term, Confucius also
uses it extensively. With the latter however it has a more
moralistic than metaphysical connotation. It is Taoists who
use it in the sense of “truth,” “ultimate reality,” “logos,” etc.
Lao-tzu defines it in his TaoTe Ching as follows:

The Way is like an empty vessel
That yet may be drawn from
Without ever needing to be filled.

It is bottomless: the very progenitor of
all things in the world. . . .

It is like a deep pool that never dries
I do not know whose child it could be.

It looks as if it were prior to God.”

There is another and more detailed characterization of Tao
in Chapter XIV:

When you look at it you cannot see it;

It is called formless.

When you listen to it you cannot hear it;

It is called soundless.

When you try to seize it you cannot hold it;

It is called subtle.

31 Translated by Arthur Waley. (From hi* The Way and III Power,
published 1934 by George Allen and Unwin Ltd. The succeeding Quota¬
tions from Tao Tl Ching are all my rendering.) Chapter IV. God here
is distinguished from Godhead as by Eclchart. The last two lines are my
own version.

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM

*9

No one can measure these three to their
ultimate ends.

Therefore they are fused to one.

It is up, but it is not brightened;

It is down, but it is not obscured.

It stretches endlessly,

And no name is to be given.

It returns to nothingness.

It is called formless form, shapeless shape.

It is called the intangible.

You face it but you cannot see its front
You follow it but you cannot see its back.

Holding on to the Ancient Way {Tao)

You control beings of today.

Thus you know the beginning of things,

Which is the essence of the Way ( Tao-chi ).

When these quotations are compared with Eckhart’s, we
see points common to both. Lao-tzu is expressing in his clas¬
sical Chinese way what the medieval Dominican preacher
would talk about in his German vernacular. Lao-tzu is poetical
and concrete, full of imageries, whereas Eckhart the theologian
is more conceptual. He would say:

“God has no before nor after.”

“God is neither this nor that.”

“God is perfect simplicity.”

“Prior to creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before
the Father in his eternal stillness.” ”

For comparison I will give another definition for Tao from
Tao Te Ching, Chapter XXV:

There is something in a state of fusion,

11 Evani, p. 148.

20

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

It is born prior to heaven and earth.

How still! How lonely!

It stands by itself unchanging,

It moves about everywhere unfailingly.

Let us have it as mother [of all things]
under the heavens.

I do not know its name,

But if needed call it Great.

The Great walks on,

Walks on to the farthest end,

And then returns.

Therefore the Tao is great,

Heaven is great,

Earth is great.

The ruler is great.

Within the realm there are four greats
And the ruler is one of them.

Man is earth when conforming to earth.

He is heaven when conforming to heaven,

He is Tao when conforming to Tao.

Let him thus conform himself to the suchness
(tzu jan) of things.

R. B. Blakncy remarks in his preface to the Tao Tc Ching
translation-that Lao-tzu’s book fascinated him for many years
and that he finally could not help producing his own transla¬
tion in spite of the fact that there arc already a large number
of such translations available. He suspects that every foreigner
who at all knows the Chinese language and can read Lao-tzu
in the original would feel the same as this new translator did.
This remark or confession on the part of the translator is
highly significant. In my view the fascination he feels about
Lao-tzu is not just due to the Old Philosopher's contribution
to “the literature of mysticism,” but partly to the language in

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 21

which it is expressed. It may be better to say that the charm
one feels about Chinese literature comes quite frequently from
visually going over those unwieldy ideogrammatic characters
with which thoughts or feelings arc made communicative. The
Chinese books are best perused in large type printed from the
wooden blocks.

Besides this visual appeal of the ideograms there is an ele¬
ment in the Chinese language which, while rare in others,
especially in Indo-European languages, expresses more directly
and concretely what our ordinary conceptualized words fail to
communicate. For instance, read the Too Te Ching, Chapter
XX, in the original and compare it with any of the transla¬
tions you have at hand and see that the translations invariably
lack that rich, graphic, emotional flavor which we after more
than two thousand five hundred years can appreciate with
deep satisfaction. Arthur Walcy Is a great Chinese scholar and
one of the best interpreters of Chinese life. His English transla¬
tion of Lao-tzu is a fine piece of work in many senses, but he
cannot go beyond the limitations of the language to which he
is born.

VI

The following story may not have historicity but it is widely
circulated among Zen followers who arc occasionally quite
disrespectful of facts. It is worth our consideration as illustrat¬
ing the way in which the Zen teachers handle the problem of
“Emptiness” or “absolute nothingness” or the “still desert”
lying beyond “this and that” and prior to “before and after.”
The story and comments are taken from a Chinese Zen text¬
book !B of the Sung dynasty of the eleventh century. The text

29 It u entitled Hekiga
Collection" or "Blue Rock

n-shu or Hekigan-roku meaning "Blue Rock
Records.”

22 MYSTICISM: CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST
is studied very much in Japan and some of the stories are
used as ko-an (problems given to Zen students for solution).

Bodhidharma, who is the first Zen patriarch in China, came
from India in the sixth century. The Emperor Wu of the
Liang dynasty invited him to his court. The Emperor Wu, a
good pious Buddhist studying the various Mahayana Sutras
and practicing the Buddhist virtues of charity and humility,
asked the teacher from India: “The Sutras refer so much to
the highest and holiest truth, but what is it, my Reverend
Master?”

Bodhidharma answered, “A vast emptiness and no holi¬
ness in it.”

The Emperor: “Who arc you then who stand before me if
there is nothing holy, nothing high in the vast emptiness of
ultimate truth?”

Bodhidharma: “I do not know, your Majesty.”

The Emperor failed to understand the meaning of this
answer and Bodhidharma left him to find a retreat in the
North.

When Bodhidharma’s express purpose of coming to China
was to elucidate the teaching of “vast emptiness” ( sunyata ),
why did he answer “I do not know” to the Emperor's all-
important and to-the-very-point question? It is evident, how¬
ever, that Bodhidharma’s answer could not have been one
of an agnostic who believes in the unknowability of ulti¬
mate truth. Bodhidharma’s unknowability must be altogether
of a different sort. It is really what Eckhart would like to see
us all have—“transformed knowledge, not ignorance which
comes from lack of knowing; it is by knowing that we get
to this unknowing. Then we know by divine knowing, then
our ignorance is ennobled and adorned with supernatural

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 23

knowledge.” 30 It was this kind of unknowing which is tran¬
scendental, divine, and supernatural that he wished his im¬
perial friend to realize.

From our ordinary relative point of view Bodhidharma may
seem too abrupt and unacceptable. But the fact is that the
knowledge or “I do not know" which is gained only by “sink¬
ing into oblivion and ignorance" 31 is something quite abrupt
or discrete or discontinuous in the human system of know-
ability, for we can get it only by leaping or plunging into the
silent valley of Absolute Emptiness. There is no continuity
between this and the knowledge we highly value in the realm
of relativity where our senses and intellect move.

The Zen teachers are all unknowing knowers or knowing
unknowers. Therefore their “I do not know" does not really
mean our “I do not know.” We must not take their answers
in the way we generally do at the level of relative knowledge.
Therefore, their comments which are quoted below do not
follow the line we ordinarily do. They have this unique way.
Yengo (1063-1135) gives his evaluation of the mondo
(“question and answer”) which took place between Bodhid¬
harma and the Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty in the fol¬
lowing words: **

Bodhidharma came to this country, via the southern route,
seeing that there was something in Chinese mentality which re¬
sponds readily to the teaching of Mahayana Buddhism. He was
full of expectations, he wanted to lead our countrymen to the
doctrine of “Mind-alone” which cannot be transmitted by letters

10 Evans, p. 13.

81 "Hit muoz komen in tin vtrgtzzen and in tin nihtwizzen." Pfeif¬
fer. p. 14. Evarn, p. 13.

88 Yengo is given here in a modernized fashion, for the original Chinese
would require a detailed interpretation.

24 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

or by means of word of mouth. The Mind could only be imme¬
diately taken hold of whereby we attain to the perception of the
Buddha-nature, that is, to the realization of Buddhahood. When
the Nature is attained, we shall be absolutely free from all bond¬
age and will not be led astray because of linguistic complications.
For here Reality itself is revealed in its nakedness with no kinds
of veil on it. In this frame of mind Bodhidharma approached the
Emperor. He also thus instructed his disciples. We see that Bod-
hidharma’s [emptied mind] had no premeditated measures, no
calculating plans. He just acted in the freest manner possible,
cutting everything asunder that would obstruct his seeing directly
into the Nature in its entire nakedness. Here was neither good
nor evil, neither right nor wrong, neither gain nor loss. . . .

The Emperor Wu was a good student of Buddhist philosophy
and wished to have the first principle elucidated by the great
teacher from India. The first principle consists in the identity of
being and non-being beyond which the philosophers fail to go.
The Emperor wondered if this blockage could somehow be
broken down by Bodhidharma. Hence his question. Bodhidharma
knew that whatever answers he might give would be frustrating.

“What is Reality? What is Godhead?”

"Vast emptiness and no distinctions whatever [neither Father
nor Son nor Holy Ghost].”

No philosopher however well trained in his profession could
ever be expected to jump out of this trap, except Bodhidharma
himself who knew perfectly well how to cut all limitations down
by one blow of a sword.

Most people nowadays fail to get into the ultimate significa¬
tion of Bodhidharma’s pronouncement and would simply cry out,
"vast emptiness” as if they really experienced it. But all to no
purpose! As my old master remarks, “When a man truly under¬
stands Bodhidharma, he for the first time finds himself at home
quietly sitting by the fireside.” Unfortunately, the Emperor Wu

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 25

happened to be one of those who could not rise above the limita¬
tions of linguistics. His views failed to penetrate the screen of
meum and tuum (you and me). Hence his second question:
“Who are you who face me?” Bodhidharma’s blunt retort, “I
do not know,” only helped make the august inquirer blankly
stare.

Later, when he learned more about Bodhidharma and realized
how stupid he was to have missed the rare opportunity of going
deeper into the mystery of Reality, he was greatly upset. Hearing
of Bodhidharma’s death after some years he erected a memorial
stele for him and inscribed on it: “Alas! I saw him, I met him, I
interviewed him, and failed to recognize him. How sad! It is all
past now. Alas, history is irrevocable!” He concluded his eulogy
thus:

“As long as the mind tarries on the plane of
relativity,

It forever remains in the dark.

But the moment it loses itself in the Emptiness,

It ascends the throne of Enlightenment.”

After finishing the story of the Emperor Wu, Yengo the
commentator puts this remark: “Tell me by the way where
Bodhidharma could be located.” This is expressly addressed
to the readers and the commentator expects us to give him an
answer. Shall we take up his challenge?

There is another commentator on this episode, who lived
some years prior to the one already referred to. This one,
called Seccho (980-1052), was a great literary talent and his
comments are put in a versified form full of poetic fantasies.
Alluding to the Emperor Wu’s attempt to send a special envoy
for Bodhidharma, who after the interview crossed the Yang-
tzu Chiang and found a retreat somewhere in the North, the
commentator goes on:

11

26 MYSTICISM: CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST

“You [the Emperor Wu] may order all your subjects
to fetch him [Bodhidharma],

But he will never show himself up again!

We are left alone for ages to come

Vainly thinking of the irrevocable past.

But stop! let us not think of the past!

The cool refreshing breeze sweeps all over the
earth.

Never knowing when to suspend its work.”

Seccho (the master commentator) now turns around and
surveying the entire congregation (as he was reciting his versi¬
fied comments), asks: “O Brethren, is not our Patriarch “ to
be discovered among us at this very moment?”

After this interruption, Seccho continues, “Yes, yes, he is
here! Let him come up and wash the feet for me!”

It would have been quite an exciting event if Eckhart ap¬
peared to be present at this session which took place in the
Flowery Kingdom in the first half of the eleventh century!
But who can tell if Eckhart is not watching me writing this
in the most modern and most mechanized city of New York?

vn

A few more remarks about “Emptiness.”

Relativity is an aspect 14 of Reality and not Reality itself.
Relativity is possible somewhere between two or more things,
for this is the way that makes one get related to another.

A similar argument applies to movement. Movement is
possible in time; without the concept of time there cannot be
a movement of any sort. For a movement meaas an object

J! Bodhidharma.

** S6 in Japanese, ksiang in Chinese, lakfana in Sanskrit.

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 27

going out of itself and becoming something else which is not
itself. Without the background of time this becoming is un¬
thinkable.

Therefore, Buddhist philosophy states that all these con¬
cepts, movement and relativity, must have their field of opera¬
tion, and this field is designated by Buddhist philosophers as
Emptiness ( Sunyata ).

When Buddha talks about all things being transient, im¬
permanent, and constantly changing, and therefore teaches
that there is nothing in this world which is absolutely depend¬
able and worth clinging to as the ultimate scat of security, he
means that we must look somewhere else for things permanent
(jo), bliss-imparting ( raku ), autonomous (gfl), and abso¬
lutely free from defilements (jo). According to the Nirvana
Sutra (of the Mahayana school), these four ( jo-raku-ga-jo )
are the qualities of Nirvana, and Nirvana is attained when we
have knowledge, when the mind is freed from thirst (tanha),
cravings (asava), and conditionality (sankhara). While Nir¬
vana is often thought to be a negativistic idea the Mahayana
followers have quite a different interpretation. For they in¬
clude autonomy (ga, atman) as one of its qualities (guna),
and autonomy is free will, something dynamic. Nirvana is an¬
other name for the Emptiness.

The term “emptiness” is apt to be misunderstood for various
reasons. The hare or rabbit has no horns, the turtle has no
hair growing on its back. This is one form of emptiness. The
Buddhist Sunyata does not mean absence.

A fire has been burning until now and there is no more of
it. This is another kind of emptiness. Buddhist sunyata does
not mean extinction.

The wall screens the room: on this side there is a table,

28 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

and on the other side there is nothing, space is unoccupied.
Buddhist sunyatd does not mean vacancy.

Absence, extinction, and unoccupancy—these are not the
Buddhist conception of emptiness. Buddhists’ Emptiness is not
on the plane of relativity. It is Absolute Emptiness transcend¬
ing all forms of mutual relationship, of subject and object,
birth and death, God and the world, something and nothing,
yes and no, affirmation and negation. In Buddhist Emptiness
there is no time, no space, no becoming, no-thing-ness; it is
what makes all these things possible; it is a zero full of infinite
possibilities, it is a void of inexhaustible contents.

Pure experience is the mind seeing itself as reflected in itself,
it is an act of self-identification, a state of suchness. Thus is
possible only when the mind is Sunyatd itself, that is, when the
mind is devoid of all its possible contents except itself. But to
say “except itself’’ is apt to be misunderstood again. For it
may be questioned, what is this "itself’? We may have to
answer in the same way as St. Augustine did: “When you
ask, I do not know; but when you do not, I know.”

The following dialogue which took place between two Zen
masters of the T’ang dynasty will help show as what method¬
ology was adopted by Zen for communicating the idea of
“itself.”

One master called Isan (771-853) was working with his
disciples in the garden, picking tea leaves. He said to one of
the disciples in the garden called Kyozan, who also was a
master: “We have been picking the tea leaves all day; I hear
your voice only and do not see your form. Show me your
primeval form.” Kyozan shook the tea bushes. Isan said, “You
just got the action, but not the body.” Kyozan then said,
“What would be your answer?” Isan remained quiet for a

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 2Q

while. Thereupon Kyozan said, “You have got the body, but
not the action.” Isan’s conclusion was, “I save you from
twenty blows of my stick.”

As far as Zen philosophy is concerned this may be all right,
as these two masters know what each is seeking to reveal. But
the business of philosophers of our modem epoch is to recog¬
nize or to probe the background of experience on which these
Zen masters stand and try to elucidate it to the best of their
capacity. The masters arc not simply engaged in mystifying
the bystanders.

To say “empty” is already denying itself. But you cannot
remain silent. How to communicate the silence without going
out of it is the crux. It is for this reason that Zen avoids as
much as possible resorting to linguistics and strives to make us
go underneath words, as it were to dig out what is there. Eck-
hart is doing this all the time in his sermons. He picks out
some innocent words from the Bible and lets them disclose an
“inner act” which he experiences in his unconscious con¬
sciousness. His thought is not at all in the words. He turns
them into instruments for his own purposes. In a similar way
the Zen master makes use of anything about himself includ¬
ing his own person, trees, stones, sticks, etc. He may then
shout, beat, or kick. The main thing is to discover what is
behind all these actions. In order to demonstrate that Reality
is “Emptiness,” the Zen master may stand still with his hands
folded over his chest. When he is asked a further question, he
may shake the tea plant or walk away without a word, or
give you a blow of a stick.

Sometimes the master is more poetic and compares the
mind of “emptiness” to the moon, calling it the mind-moon

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

30

or the moon of suchncss. An ancient master of Zen philosophy
sings of this moon:

The mind-moon is solitary and perfect:

The light swallows the ten-thousand things.

It is not that the light illuminates objects,

Nor are objects in existence.

Both light and objects arc gone,

And what is it that remains?

The master leaves the question unanswered. When it is an¬
swered the moon will no longer be there. Reality is differenti¬
ated and Emptiness vanishes into an emptiness. We ought not
to lose sight of the original moon, primeval mind-moon, and
the master wants us to go back to this, for it is where we
have started first. Emptiness is not a vacancy, it holds in it
infinite rays of light and swallows all the multiplicities there
are in this world.

Buddhist phiiosophy is the philosophy of “Emptiness,” it is
the philosophy of self-identity. Self-identity is to be distin¬
guished from mere identity. In an identity we have two objects
for identification; in self-identity there is just one object or
subject, one only, and this one identifies itself by going out of
itself. Self-identity thus involves a movement. And we sec that
self-identity is the mind going out of itself in order to see
itself reflected in itself. Self-identity is the logic of pure experi¬
ence or of “Emptiness.” In self-identity there are no contra¬
dictions whatever. Buddhists call this suchness.

I once talked with a group of lovers of the arts on the
Buddhist teaching of “Emptiness” and Suchness, trying to
show how the teaching is related to the arts. The following is
part of my talk.

To speak the truth, I am not qualified to say anything at

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 31

all about the arts, because I have no artistic instincts, no
artistic education, and have not had many opportunities to
appreciate good works of art. All that I can say is more or less
conceptual.

Take the case of painting. I often hear Chinese or Japanese
art critics declare that Oriental art consists in depicting spirit
and not form. For they say that when the spirit is understood
the form creates itself; the main thing is to get into the spirit
of an object which the painter chooses for his subject. The
West, on the other hand, emphasizes form, endeavors to reach
the spirit by means of form. The East is just the opposite: the
spirit is all in all. And it thinks that when the artist grasps
the spirit, his work reveals something more than colors and
lines can convey. A real artist is a creator and not a copyist.
He has visited God’s workshop and has learned the secrets of
creation—creating something out of nothing.

With such a painter every stroke of his brush is the work
of creation, and it cannot be retraced because it never permits
a repetition. God cannot cancel his fiat; it is final, irrevocable,
it is an ultimatum. The painter cannot reproduce his own
work. When even a single stroke of his brush is absolute, how
can the whole structure or composition be reproduced, since
this is the synthesis of all his strokes, every one of which has
been directed toward the whole?

In the same way every minute of human life as long as it
is an expression of its inner self is original, divine, creative,
and cannot be retrieved. Each individual life thus is a great
work of art. Whether or not one makes it a fine inimitable
masterpiece depends upon one’s consciousness of the working
of Sunyald within oneself.

How docs the painter get into the spirit of the plant, for

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

32

instance, if he wants to paint a hibiscus as Mokkei (Mu-chi)
of the thirteenth century did in his famous picture, which is
now preserved as a national treasure at Daitokuji temple in
Kyoto? The secret is to become the plant itself. But now can
a human being turn himself into a plant? Inasmuch as he
aspires to paint a plant or an animal, there must be in him
something which corresponds to it in one way or another. If
so, he ought to be able to become the object he desires to paint.

The discipline consists in studying the plant inwardly with
his mind thoroughly purified of its subjective, self-centered
contents. This means to keep the mind in unison with the
“Emptiness” or Suchness, whereby one who stands against the
object ceases to be the one outside that object but transforms
himself into the object itself. This identification enables the
painter to feel the pulsation of one and the same life animat¬
ing both him and the object. This is what is meant when it is
said that the subject is lost in the object, and that when the
painter begins his work it is not he but the object itself that
is working and it is then that his brush, as well as his arm and
his fingers, become obedient servants to the spirit of the object.
The object makes its own picture. The spirit secs itself as re¬
flected in itself. This is also a case of self-identity.

It is said that Henri Matisse looked at an object which he
intended to paint for weeks, even for months, until its spirit
began to move him, to urge him, even to threaten him, to give
it an expression.

A writer on modern art, I am told, says that the artist’s
idea of a straight line is different from that of the mathemati¬
cian, for the former conceives a straight line as fusing with a
curve. I do not know whether this quotation is quite correct,
but the remark is most illuminating. For a straight line that

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM

33

remains always straight is a dead line and the curve that can¬
not be anything else is another dead line. If they are at all
living lines, and this ought to be the case with every artistic
production, a straight line is curved and a curve is straight;
besides there ought to be what is known as “dimensional ten¬
sion” in every line. Every living line is not just on one plane, it
is suffused with blood, it is tridimensional.

I am also told that color with the artist is not just red or
blue, it is more than perceptual, it is charged with emotion.
This means that color is a living thing with the artist. When
he secs red it works out its own world; the artist bestows a
heart on the color. The red does not stop just at being one of
the seven colors as decomposed through the prism. As a living
thing it calls out all other colors and combines them in ac¬
cordance with its inner promptings. Red with the artist is not
a mere physical or psychological event, it is endowed with a
spirit.

These views are remarkably Oriental. There is another
striking statement made by a Western artist. According to
him, when he is thoroughly absorbed in a visual perception of
any kind, he feels within himself certain possibilities out of the
visual representation which urge him to give them an expres¬
sion. The artist’s life is that of the creator. God did not make
the world just for the sake of making something. He had a
certain inner urge, he wanted to see himself reflected in his
creation. That is what is meant when the Bible speaks about
God’s making man after his own likeness. It is not man alone
that is God’s image, the whole world Is his image, even the
meanest flea as Eckhart would say shares God’s is-ness in its
is-ncss. And because of this is-ness the whole world moves on.
So with the artist. It is due to his is-ness being imbued into

mysticism: Christian and buddiiist

34

his works that they are alive with his spirit. The artist himself
may not be conscious of all this proceeding, but Zen knows
and is also prepared to impart the knowledge to those who
would approach it in the proper spirit. The is-ness of a thing
is not just being so, but it contains in it infinite possibilities
which Buddhists call te in Chinese, toku in Japanese, and guna
in Sanskrit. This is where lies “the mystery of being,” which
is “the inexhaustibility of the Emptiness.”

The following story of Rakan Osho (Lohan Hoshang), of
Shoshu, China, who lived in the ninth century, is given here
to illustrate how Zen transforms one’s view of life and makes
one truly see into the is-ness of things. The verse relates his
own experience.

It was in the seventh year of Hsien-t’ung [867 a.d.]
that I for the first time took up the study of the
Tao [that is, Zen].

'Wherever I went I met words and did not understand them.

A lump of doubt inside the mind was like a willow-basket.

For three years, residing in the woods by the stream, I was
altogether unhappy.

When unexpectedly I happened to meet the Dharmaraja
[Zen master] sitting on the rug,

I advanced towards him earnestly asking him to dissolve
my doubt.

The master rose from the rug on which he sat deeply absorbed
in meditation;

He then baring his arm gave me a blow with his fist on
my chest.

This all of a sudden exploded my lump of doubt completely
to pieces.

MEISTER ECKHART AND BUDDHISM 35

Raising my head I for the first time perceived that the sun
was circular.

Since then I have been the happiest man in the world, with
no fears, no worries;

Day in day out, I pass my time in a most lively way.

Only I notice my inside filled with a sense of fullness and
satisfaction;

I do not go out any longer, hither and tliither, with my
begging bowl for food. 33

What is of the most significant interest in his verse-story of
Rakan Osho’s experience is that “he for the first time per¬
ceived that the sun was round.” Everybody knows and secs
the sun and the Osho also must have seen it all his life. Why
then does he specifically refer to it as circular as if he saw it
really for the first time? We all think we are living, we really
eat, sleep, walk, talk. But arc we really? If we were, we would
never be talking about “dread,” “insecurity,” “fear,” “frus¬
tration,” “courage to be,” “looking into the vacant,” “facing
death.”

** The Transmission of the Lamp ( Dentoroku ), fas. XI.

II.

The Basis of Buddhist Philosophy

i

BUDDHIST philosophy is based on the experience Buddha
had about twenty-five centuries ago. To understand, therefore,
what Buddhist philosophy is, it is necessary to know what that
experience was which Buddha had after six years’ hard think¬
ing and ascetic austerities and exercises in meditation.

We generally think that philosophy is a matter of pure in¬
tellect, and, therefore, that the best philosophy comes out of
a mind most richly endowed with intellectual acumen and
dialectical subtleties. But this is not the case. It is true that
those who are poorly equipped with intellectual powers can¬
not be good philosophers. Intellect, however, is not the whole
thing. There must be a deep power of imagination, there must
be a strong, inflexible will-power, there must be a keen insight
into the nature of man, and finally there must be an actual
seeing of the truth as synthesized in the whole being of the
man himself.

I wish to emphasize this idea of “seeing.” It is not enough
to “know” as the term is ordinarily understood. Knowledge
unless it is accompanied by a personal experience is super¬
ficial and no kind of philosophy can be built upon such a

36

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 37

shaky foundation. There are, however, I suppose many sys¬
tems of thought not backed by real experiences, but such are
never inspiring. They may be fine to look at but their power
to move the readers is nil. Whatever knowledge the philosopher
may have, it must come out of his experience, and this expe-
ence is seeing. Buddha has always emphasized this. He couples
knowing (nana, jnaixa ) with seeing (passa, paiya ), for with¬
out seeing, knowing has no depths, cannot understand the
realities of life. Therefore, the first item of the Eightfold Noble
Path is sammadassana, right seeing, and sammasankappa,
right knowing, comes next. Seeing is experiencing, seeing
things in their state of suchncss ( tathatd) or is-ncss. Buddha’s
whole philosophy comes from this “seeing,” this experiencing.

The experience which forms the basis of Buddhist philoso¬
phy is called “enlightenment-experience,” for it is this experi¬
ence of enlightenment which Buddha had after six years of
hard thinking and profound reflection, and everything he
taught afterward is the unfolding of this inner perception he
then had.

What then was this enlightenment-experience?

n

Roughly speaking, we can say that there are two ways of
approaching this question: What is the enlightenment-experi¬
ence Buddha had? One is objective and the other subjective.
The objective approach is to find out the first rationalized
statements ascribed to Buddha after the experience and un¬
derstood as forming the basis of his teaching. That is, what
did he first teach? What was the main thesis he continued to
preach throughout his life? This will be to discover what
characteristically constitutes the Buddhist teaching as dis-

38 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

tinguished from that of the rest of the Indian thinkers. The
second approach, called subjective, is to examine Buddha’s
utterances reflecting his immediate feelings after the experi¬
ence of enlightenment. The first approach is metaphysical
whereas the second is psychological or existential. Let us start
with the first.

What is universally recognized as Buddhist thought regard¬
less of its varieties of interpretation is the doctrine of anattd
or andlman, that is, the doctrine of non-ego. Its argument
begins with the idea: ( 1 ) that all things arc transient as they
are composites (skandha or khandha) and go on disintegrat¬
ing all the time, that there is nothing permanent; and (2)
that there is therefore nothing worth clinging to in ths world
where every one of us is made to undergo all kinds of sorrow
and suffering. How do we escape from them? Or, how do we
conquer them? For we cannot go on like this. We must some¬
how find the way out of this torture. It was this feeling of
fear and insecurity individually and collectively that made
Buddha leave his home and wander about for six long years
seeking for a way out not only for himself but for the w-holc
world. He finally discovered it by hitting upon the idea of
non-ego (anattd). The formula runs thus: 1

All composite things ( sankhdra) arc impermanent. When a
man by wisdom (panda) realizes [this,], he heeds not [this world
of] sorrow; this is the path to purity.

All composite things arc sorrowful. When a man by wisdom
realizes [this], he heeds not [this world of] sorrow; this is the path
to purity.

> The Dhammapada, translated by S. Radhakrishnan (Oxford Univcr-
sity Press, 1951), verses 277-9, pp. 146-7. I do not, however, always
follow him in my quotations in this book.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 39

All things (dhammfi) are egoless. When a man by wisdom
realizes [this], he heeds not [this world of] sorrow; this is the path
to purity.

The one thing I wish to call to the readers’ attention is the
term “wisdom,” patina, or prajtia in Sanskrit. This is a very
important term throughout Buddhist philosophy. There is no
English equivalent for it. “Transcendental wisdom” is too
heavy, besides it docs not exactly hit the mark. But tempo¬
rarily let “wisdom” do. We know that seeing is very much
emphasized in Buddhism, but we must not fail also to notice
that seeing is not just an ordinary seeing by means of rela¬
tive knowledge; it is the seeing by means of a prajtia -eye
which is a special kind of intuition enabling us to penetrate
right into the bedrock of Reality itself. I have elsewhere 3 given
a somewhat detailed account of prajtia and its role in Buddhist
teachings, especially in Zen Buddhism.

The doctrine of non-ego not only repudiates the idea of an
ego-substance but points out the illusivcncss of the ego-idea
itself. As long as we are in this world of particular existences
we cannot avoid cherishing the idea of an individual ego. But
this by no means warrants the substantiality of the ego.
Modern psychology has in fact done away with an ego-entity.
It is simply a workable hypothesis by which we carry on our
practical business. The problem of the ego must be carried on
to the field of metaphysics. To really understand what Buddha
meant by saying that there is no atman, we must leave psy¬
chology behind. Because it is not enough just to state that
there is no at man if we wish really to reach the end of sorrow
and to be thus at peace with ourselves and with the world at
large. We must have something positive in order to see our-

*StudUs in Ztn (London: Rider and Company, 1955), pp. 85-128.

.j.0 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

selves safely in the harbor and securely anchored. Mere psy¬
chology cannot give us this. We must go out to a broader field
of Reality where praymi-intuition comes into play.

As long as we wander in the domain of the senses and in¬
tellect, the idea of an individual ego besets us, and makes us
eternally pursue the shadow of the ego. But the ego is some¬
thing always eluding our grasp; when we think we have
caught it, it is found to be no more than a slough left by the
snake while the real ego is somewhere else. The human ego-
snake is covered with an infinity of sloughs, the catcher will
before long find himself all exhausted. The ego must be caught
not from outside but from within. This is the work of prajhd.
The wonder prajhd performs is to catch the actor in the midst
of his action, he is not made to stop acting in order to be
seen as actor. The actor is the acting, and the acting is the
actor, and out of this unification or identification prajhd is
awakened. The ego does not go out of himself in order to see
himself. He stays within himself and secs hinrsclf as reflected
in himself. But as soon as a split takes place between the ego
as actor and the ego as seer or spectator, prajhd is dichoto¬
mized, and all is lost.

Eckhart expresses the same experience in terms of Christian
theology. He talks about Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and love.
They sound unfamiliar to Buddhist cars but when they are
read with a certain insight we will find that “the love with
which he [God] loves himself” is the same as the prajhd-
intuition that sees into the ego itself. Eckhart tells us: “In
giving us his love God has given us his Holy Ghost so that we
can love him with the love wherewith he loves himself. We
love God with his own love; awareness of it deifies us.” * The

* Evans, pp. 147 fF.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

4 *

Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Father—this
mutual love, that is, love loving itself is, in Zen terminology,
one mirror reflecting another with no shadow between them.
Eckhart calls this “the play going on in the Father-nature.
Play and audience are the same.” He continues:

This play was played eternally before all natures. As it is
written in the Book of Wisdom, “Prior to creatures, in the eternal
now, I have played before the Father in an eternal stillness.”
The Son has eternally been playing before the Father as the
Father has before his Son. The playing of the twain is the Holy
Ghost in whom they both disport themselves and he disports
himself in both. Sport and players arc the same. Their nature
proceeding in itself. “God is a fountain flowing into itself,” as
St. Dionysius says.

Pra;na-intuition comes out of itself and returns to itself. The
self or ego that has been constantly eluding our rationalized
scrutiny is at last caught when it comes under pra;na-intuition
which is no other than the self.

Buddhists generally talk about the egolcssncss (anatta or
analmya) of all things, but they forget that the egolessness of
things cannot really be understood until they arc seen with
the eye of pra;nd-intuition. The psychological annihilation of
an ego-substance Is not enough, for this still leaves the light
of prajna-e ye under a coverage. Eckhart says, “God is a light
shining itself in silent stillness.” (Evans, p. 146.) As long as
our intellectually analytic eye is hotly pursuing the shadow of
Reality by dichotomizing it, there will be no silent stillness of
absolute identity where prajna sees itself reflected in itself.
Eckhart is in accord with the Buddhist experience when he
proceeds: “The Word of the Father is none other than his
understanding of himself. The understanding of the Father

42 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

understands that he understands, and that his understanding
understands is the same as that he is who is understanding.
That is, the light from the light.” (Ibid., p. 146.)

The psychological analysis that cannot go further or deeper
than the cgolessness of the psychological ego fails to see into
the cgolessness of all things ( dharma ), which appears to the
eye of />ra;n< 2 -intuition not as something sheerly of privative
value but as something filled with infinite possibilities. It is
only when the prajna-c ye surveys the nature of all things
(sarvadharma or sabbe dhamma), that their cgolessness dis¬
plays positive constructive energies by first dispelling the
clouds of Maya, by demolishing every structure of illusion,
and thus finally by creating a world of altogether new values
based on prajna (wisdom) and karuna (love). The enlighten¬
ment-experience therefore means going beyond the world of
psychology, the opening of the prajna- eye, and seeing into the
realm of Ultimate Reality, and landing on the other shore of
the stream of samsdra, where all things are viewed in their
state of suchness, in the way of purity. This is when a man
finds his mind freed from everything ( sabbattha vimut-
tamdnasa)* not confounded by the notions of birth-and-
death, of constant change, of before, behind, and middle. He
is the “conqueror” to whom The Dhammapada (179) gives
this qualification:

He whose conquest nobody can conquer again,

Into whose conquest nobody in this world can enter—

By what track can you trace him,

The awakened, of infinite range, the trackless?

Such an awakened one is an absolute conqueror and nobody
*Thi Dhammapada , verse 348, p. 167.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 43

can follow his tracks as he leaves none. If he leaves some, this
will be turned into the means whereby he can be defeated.
The realm where he lives has no limiting boundaries, it is like
a circle whose circumference is infinite, therefore with no
center to which a path can lead. This is the one Zen describes
as a man of anabhogacaryd (“an effortless, purposeless, useless
man”) . 8 This corresponds to Eckhart’s man of freedom who is
defined as “one who clings to nothing and to whom nothing
clings” (Evans, p. 146). While these statements are apt to
suggest the doctrine of doing-nothing-ness we must remember
that Buddhists arc great adherents of what is known as the
teaching of karuna and pranidhana, to which the reader is
referred below.

hi

When “the cgolcssncss of all things seen with prajha /
which makes us transcend sorrows and sufferings and leads to
“the path of purity,” is understood in the sense herein eluci¬
dated, we find the way to the understanding of the lines
known as “hymn of victory.”

The hymn is traditionally ascribed to Buddha who uttered
it at the time of his enlightenment. It expresses more of the
subjective aspect of his experience which facilitates our ex¬
amination of the content of the enlightenment. While the
cgolcssncss of things is Buddha’s metaphysical interpretation
of the experience as he reflected upon it, the hymn of victory
echoes his immediate reaction, and we arc able to have a
glimpse into the inner aspect of Buddha’s mind more directly
than through the conceptualization which came later. We can

S Studies in the Lankauatara Sutra, pp. 223 IT.

« “Sabbe dhamma anatta’ ti yada pahhaya passati."

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

44

now proceed to what I have called the second approach. The
hymn runs as follows:

Looking for the maker of this tabernacle
I ran to no avail

Through a round of many births;

And wearisome is birth again and again.

But now, maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen;
Thou shalt not rear this tabernacle again.

All thy rafters arc broken,

Thy ridge-pole is shattered;

The mind approaching the Eternal,

Has attained to the extinction of all desires. 1

This is Irving Babbitt’s translation, the lines of which were
rearranged according to the original Pali. Incidentally, I wish
to remark that there is one point in it which is unsatisfactory
from my point of view. This is the phrase, “the mind ap¬
proaching the Eternal.” The original is “visankharagatam
cittam” This means “the mind released from its binding con¬
ditions.” “Approaching the Eternal” is the translator’s own
idea read into the line. Henry Warren, author of Buddhism in
Translations, translates it “this mind has demolition reached,”
which points to nihilism or negativism, while Babbitt’s trans¬
lation has something of positive assertion. The difference so
conspicuous in these two translations shows that each inter¬
prets the meaning according to his own philosophy. In this
respect my understanding, which is given below, also reflects
my own thought as regards the significance of Buddhist teach¬
ing generally.

The most essential thing here is the experience that Buddha
had of being released from the bondage in which he had been

T Tht Dhammapada, pp. 153-4. (Published by Oxford University
Press, 1936.)

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 45

kept so long. The utmost consciousness that filled his mind at
the time of enlightenment was that he was no longer the slave
to what he calls “the maker of the tabernacle,” or “the builder
of this house,” that is, gahakaraka. He now feels himself to
be a free agent, master of himself, not subject to anything
external; he no longer submits himself to dictation from what¬
ever source it may come. The gahakaraka is discovered, the
one who was thought to be behind all his mental and physical
activities, and who, as long as he, that is, Buddha, was igno¬
rant, made him a slave to this autocrat, and employed Buddha
—in fact anybody who is ignorant of the gahakaraka— to
achieve the latter’s egocentric impulses, desires, cravings.
Buddha was an abject creature utterly under the control of
this tyrant, and it was this sense of absolute helplessness that
made Buddha most miserable, unhappy, and given over to all
kinds of fears, dejection, and moroseness. But Buddha now
discovers who this gahakaraka is; not only does he know him,
but he has actually seen him face to face, taken hold of him
at work. The monster, the house-builder, the constructor of
the prison-house, being known, being seen, being caught,
ceases at last to weave his entrapping network around Buddha.
This means what the phrase "visankhdragatam ciltam” means,
the mind freed from the bondage of its conditioning aggre¬
gates (sankhdra ).

We must however remember that the gahakaraka is not
dead, he is still alive, for he will be living as long as this
physical existence continues. Only he has ceased to be my
master; on the contrary, I am his master, I can use him as I
wish, he is ready now to obey my command. “Being free from
the tyranny of its binding conditions” does not mean that the
conditions no longer exist. As long as we are relative existences

46 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

\vc arc to that extent conditioned, but the knowledge that we
arc so conditioned transcends the conditions and thus we arc
above them. The sense of freedom arises from this, and free¬
dom never means lawlessness, wantonness, or libertinism.
Those who understand freedom in this latter sense and act
accordingly are making themselves slaves to their egotistic
passions. They are no longer masters of themselves but most
despicable slaves of the gahakaraka.

The seeing of the gahakaraka therefore docs not mean the
“seeing of the last of all desire,” nor is it “the extinction of
all desires.” It only means that all the desires and passions we
are in possession of, as human beings, are now under the con¬
trol of one who has caught the gahakaraka working out his
own limited understanding of freedom. The enlightenment-
experience docs not annihilate anything; it sees into the work¬
ing of the gahakaraka from a higher point of understanding,
which is to say, by means of prajha, and arranges it where
it properly belongs. By enlightenment Buddha sees all things
in their proper order, as they should be, which means that
Buddha’s insight has reached the deepest depths of Reality.

As I have said before, the seeing plays the most important
role in Buddhist epistemology, for seeing is at the basis of
knowing. Knowing is impossible without seeing; all knowledge
has its origin in seeing. Knowing and seeing arc thus found
generally united in Buddha’s teaching. Buddhist philosophy
therefore ultimately points to seeing reality as it is. Seeing is
experiencing enlightenment. The Dharma * is predicated as
ehipassika, the Dharma is something “you come and sec.” It
is for this reason that sammadassana (sammddilthi in San¬
skrit) is placed at the beginning of the Eightfold Noble Path.

^ * Dhamma in Pali. It ha* a multiple meaning and is difficult to render
it uniformly. Here it stands for Truth, Reality, Norm.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 47

What is the gahakaraka?

The gahakaraka detected is our relative, empirical ego, and
the mind freed from its binding conditions ( sankhdra ) is the
absolute ego, Atman, as it is elucidated in the Nirvana Sutra.
The denial of Atman as maintained by earlier Buddhists refers
to Atman as the relative ego and not to the absolute ego, the
ego after cnlightcnmcnt-cxpcricncc.

Enlightenment consists in seeing into the meaning of life as
the relative ego and not as the absolute ego, the ego after
cnlightcnmcnt-cxpcricncc.

Enlightenment consists in seeing into the meaning of life as
the interplay of the relative ego with the absolute ego. In other
words, enlightenment is seeing the absolute ego as reflected in
the relative ego and acting through it.

Or we may express the idea in this way: the absolute ego
creates the relative ego in order to see itself reflected in it, that
is, in the relative ego. The absolute ego, as long as it remains
absolute, has no means whereby to assert itself, to manifest it¬
self, to work out all its possibilities. It requires a gahakaraka
to execute its biddings. While the gahakaraka is not to build
his tabernacle according to his own design, he is an efficient
agent to actualize whatever lies quiescently in the Atman in
the sense of the Nirvana Sutra.

iv

The question now is: Why does the absolute Atman want
to sec itself reflected in the empirical Atman? Why docs it
want to work out its infinite possibilities through the empirical
Atman? Why does it not remain content with itself instead of
going out to a world of multitudes, thereby risking itself to

48 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

come under the domination of sankhdra? This is making it¬
self, as it were, a willing slave of the gahakdraka.

This is a great mystery which cannot be solved on the plane
of intellection. The intellect raises the question, but fails to
give it a satisfactory solution. This is in the nature of the in¬
tellect. The function of the intellect consists in leading the
mind to a higher field of consciousness by proposing all sorts
of questions which arc beyond itself. The mystery is solved by
living it, by seeing into its working, by actually experiencing
the significance of life, or by tasting the value of living. 9

Tasting, seeing, experiencing, living—all these demonstrate
that there is something common to enlightenment-experience
and our sense-experience; the one takes place in our innermost
being, the other on the periphery of our consciousness. Per¬
sonal experience is thus seen to be the foundation of Buddhist
philosophy. In this sense Buddhism is radical empiricism or
experientialism, whatever dialectic later developed to probe
the meaning of enlightenment-experience.

Buddhist philosophy has long been wrongly regarded as
nihilistic and not offering anything constructive. But those
who really try to understand it and arc not superficially led to
misconstrue such terms as demolition, annihilation, extinction,
breaking up, cessation, or quiescence, or without thirst, cutting
off lust and hatred, will readily see that Buddha never taught
a religion of “eternal death.”

“Eternal death,” which is sometimes regarded as the out¬
come of the Buddhist idea of egolessncss, is a strange notion
making no sense whatever. “Death” can mean something only
when it is contrasted to birth, for it is a relative term. Eternal

»"0 taite and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that
trusteth in him.” (Psalms, 34:8.)

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 49

death is squaring a circle. Death never takes place unless there
is a birth. Where there is birth there is death; where there is
death there is birth; birth and death go together. We can
never have just one of them, leaving out the other. Where
there is eternal death there must be continuous birth. Where
eternal death is maintained there must be a never-ceasing
birth. Those who talk about total annihilation or extinction as
if such things were possible are those who have never faced
facts of experience.

Life is a never-ending concatenation of births and deaths.
What Buddhist philosophy teaches is to see into the meaning
of life as it flows on. When Buddhists declare that all things
are impermanent, subject to conditions, and that there is noth¬
ing in this world of samsara (birth-and-dcath) which can give
us the hope for absolute security, they mean that as long as
we take this world of transiency as something worth clinging
to we are sure to lead a life of frustration. To transcend this
negativistic attitude toward life we must make use of prajha
which is the way of purity. We must see things with the eye
of prajha, not to deny them as rubbish but to understand
them from an aspect closed to ordinary observers. The latter
see nothing but the impermanence or transiency or change¬
ability of things and are unable to sec eternity itself that goes
along with time-scrialism which can never be demolished. The
demolition is on our side and not on the side of time. Buddha’s
enlightenment-experience clearly points to this. The ridgepole
smashed and the rafters tom down all belong to time-scrialism
and not to eternity which suffers no kind of demolition. To
imagine that when serialism is transcended eternity goes out of
sight as if it were something relatively coexistent with time is
altogether an erroneous way to interpret Buddha’s utterance.

50 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

It really requires the prajna-tyt to see into the "sankhdra -freed
mind,” which is in fact no other than Eckhart’s eye: “The
eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me:
my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one vision, one knowing,
one love.” Time is eternity and eternity is time. In other
words, zero is infinity and infinity is zero. The way of purity
opens when the eye sees inwardly as well as outwardly—and
this simultaneously. The prajnd seeing is one act, one glimpse,
one cittaksdna which is no cittaksdna. Unless this truth is seen
with pra;mz-intuition, the “hymn of victory” will never yield
its full meaning. Those who read it otherwise cannot go
beyond negativism or nihilism.

The following from Eckhart will shed much light:

Renewal befalls all creatures under God; but for God there is
no renewal, only all eternity. What is eternity?—It is charac¬
teristic of eternity that in it youth and being are the same, for
eternity would not be eternal could it newly become and were
not always. 10

"Renewal” means “becoming” which is “transiency.” What is
eternal never knows “renewal,” never grows old, remains
forever “youthful,” and transcends “demolition” or “annihila¬
tion” of all kinds. Enlightenment is to know what this “eter¬
nity” is, and this knowing consists in “knowing eternity-wise
his [God’s] is-ness free from becoming, and his nameless noth¬
ingness” n Eckhart is quite definite in giving us what kind of
God he has in mind in this matter of knowing and not know¬
ing:

Know’st thou of him anything? He is no such thing, and in

50 Evans, p. 246.

” Pfeiffer, p. 319. "Du mil imt oerstandest ewicliche sine ungewordene
istikeit under sine ungenanten nihlheil ."

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 5 1

that thou dost know of him anything at all thou art in ignorance,
and ignorance leads to the condition of the brute; for in crea¬
tures what is ignorant is brutish. If thou wouldst not be brutish
then, know nothing of the unuttcrcd God.—“What then shall I
do?”—Thou shalt lose thy thy-ness and dissolve in his his-ncss;
thy thine shall be his mine, so utterly one mine that thou in him
shalt know etcmalwisc his is-ncss, free from becoming: his name¬
less nothingness. 12

Eckhart’s God of nameless nothingness is in Buddhist terms
no other than the cgolessncss of all things, the sankhara-hec
mind, and the cessation of all cravings.

v

In this connection I think it is opportune to say a few words
about the negative statements liberally used in Buddhist and
other texts dealing with problems of ultimate reality. I may
also touch a little on the frequency of paradoxical propositions
used to express a certain experience popularly known as mystic.

Considering all in all, there arc two sources of knowledge,
or two kinds of experience, or “two births of man” as Eckhart
has it, or two forms of truth (satya) according to the up¬
holders of the “Emptiness” doctrine ( sunyavada ). Unless this
is recognized we can never solve the problem of logical con¬
tradiction which when expressed in words characterizes all
religious experiences. The contradiction so puzzling to the or¬
dinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to
use language to communicate our inner experience which in
its very nature transcends linguistics. But as we have so far
no means of communication except the one resorted to by fol¬
lowers of Zen Buddhism, the conflicts go on between rational-
11 Evan*, p. 246.

67U

52 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

ists and so-called mystics. Language developed first for the use
of the first kind of knowledge which was highly utilitarian,
and for this reason it came to assert itself over all human
affairs and experiences. Its overwhelming authority is such
that we have almost come to accept everything language com¬
mands. Our thoughts have now to be molded according to its
dictates, our acts arc to be regulated by the rules it came to
formulate for its own effective operation. This is not all. What
is worse is that language has now come even to suppress the
truth of new experiences, and that when they actually take
place, it will condemn them as “illogical” or “unthinkable”
and therefore as false, and finally that as such it will try to
put aside anything new as of no human value.

The Sunyata school distinguishes two forms of truth
( satya ): (1) samvritti of the relative world and (2) para-
mdrtha of the transcendental realm of /»r<z;7ia-intuition. When
Buddha speaks of his enlightenment in the Saddharmapun-
danka Sutra (“Lotus Gospel”), he describes his experience as
something which cannot be comprehended by any of his fol¬
lowers because their understanding can never rise up to the
level of Buddha’s. It is another Buddha who understands a
Buddha, Buddhas have their own world into which no beings
of ordinary caliber of mentality can have a glimpse. Language
belongs to this world of relativity, and when Buddha tries to
express himself by this means his hearers are naturally barred
from entering his inner life. While in the Lankavaldra Sutra
we arc told of many other Buddha-countries where Buddha-
activities arc carried on by means other than mere language,
for instance, by moving hands or legs, by smiling, by cough¬
ing, by sneezing, etc. Evidently Buddhas can understand one
another by whatever means they may employ in conveying

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 53

their inner acts, because they all know what they are through
their experience. But where there are no such corresponding
experiences, no amount of technique one may resort to will be
possible to awaken them in others.

In ASvaghosa’s Awakening of Faith reference is made to
two aspects of Tathata (“Suchness” ) one of which is alto¬
gether beyond speaking or writing, because it does not fall into
the categories of communicability. Language here has no use
whatever. But ASvaghosa continues: if we did not appeal to
language there is no way to make others acquainted with the
absolute; therefore language is resorted to in order to serve as
a wedge in getting out the one already in use; it is like a
poisonous medicine to counteract another. It is a most dan¬
gerous weapon and its user has to be cautioned in every way
not to hurt himself. The Lankavatara is decisive in this respect:

. . . word-discrimination cannot express the highest reality,
for external objects with their multitudinous individual marks
are non-existent, and only appear before us as something revealed
out of Mind itself. Therefore, Mahamati, you must try to keep
yourself away from the various forms of word-discrimination. 15

Word-discrimination belongs to the samvritti, to things of
the relative world, and is not meant for communicating any¬
thing that goes beyond this world of numbers and multiplici¬
ties. For here language ceases to be supreme and must realize
that it has its limitations. Two of the three kinds of knowledge
distinguished by Eckhart are of the samvritti , whereas the
third corresponds to the paramartha. To quote Eckhart:

These three things stand for three kinds of knowledge. The

LankauatSra Sutra, translated by D. T. Suzuki (London: George
Routledge and Son*. Ltd., 1932), p. 77.

54 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

first is sensible. The eye secs from afar what is outside it. The
second is rational and is a great deal higher. The tTiird corre¬
sponds to an exalted power of the soul, a power so high and
noble it is able to see God face to face in his own self. This power
has naught in common with naught, it knows no yesterday or
day before, no morrow or day after (for in eternity there is no
yesterday or morrow): therein it is the present now; the happen¬
ings of the thousand years ago, a thousand years to come, arc
there in the present and the antipodes the same as here. 14

The first two kinds apply to the world of senses and the in¬
tellect where language has its utmost usefulness. But when we
try to use it in the realm where “the exalted power of the soul"
has its sway it miserably fails to convey the activities going on
there to those whose “power” has never been “heightened”
or enhanced to the level indicated by Eckhart. But as we are
forced to make use of language inasmuch as we are creatures
of the sense-intellect, we contradict ourselves, as we sec in
Eckhart’s statements just quoted. In this respect Eckhart and
all other thinkers of Eckhart’s pattern go on disregarding rules
of logic or linguistics. The point is that linguists or logicians
are to abandon their limited way of studying facts of experi¬
ence so that they can analyze the facts themselves and make
language amenable to what they discover there. As long as they
take up language first and try to adjust all human experiences
to the requirements of language instead of the opposite, they
will have their problems unsolved.

Eckhart further writes:

The just man serves neither God nor creature: he is free; and
the more he is just the more he is free and the more he is free¬
dom itself. Nothing created is free. While there is aught above

» Evans, p. 228 .

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 55

me, excepting God himself, it must constrain me, however [great];
even love and knowledge, so far as it is creature and not actually
God, confines me with its limits. 18

Let us first see what linguistics would say about this state¬
ment. Its reasoning may run something like this: “When Eck-
hart expresses himself as ‘a free man’ he is irresistible and
wonderful, but he still recognizes God as he confesses ‘except¬
ing God.’ Why, we may ask, has he to make the exception of
God instead of asserting his absolute freedom above all things
small and great? If he has to consider God, he cannot be so
free as he claims to be?” These objections hold good indeed
so far as our logical analysis does not extend beyond language
and its values. But one who has an Eckhartian experience will
very well understand what he really means. And what he
means is this: a man is free only when he is in God, with God,
for God; and this is not the condition of freedom, for when
he is in God he is freedom itself; he is free when he realizes
that he is actually himself by forswearing that he is in God
and absolutely free. Says Eckhart:

I was thinking lately: that I am a man belongs to other men
in common with myself; I see and hear and eat and drink like
any other animal; but that I am belongs to no one but myself,
not to man nor angel, no, nor yet to God excepting in so far as
I am one with him. 10

In the latter part of the same sermon, Eckhart adds: “Ego,
the word ‘I,’ is proper to none but to God himself in his same¬
ness.” This “I” is evidently referred to in another sermon en¬
titled “The Castle of the Soul” as “a spark,” “a spiritual light.”

56 mysticism: Christian and buddiiist

From time to time I tell of the one power in the soul which
alone is free. Sometimes I have called it the tabernacle of the
soul; sometimes a spiritual light, anon I say it is a spark. But now
I say: it is neither this nor that. Yet it is somewhat: somewhat
more exalted over this and that than the heavens arc above the
earth. ... It is of all names free, of all forms void: exempt and
free as God is in himself.”

Our language is the product of a world of numbers and in¬
dividuals of yesterdays and todays and tomorrows, and is most
usefully applicable to this world ( loka ). But our experiences
have it that our world extends beyond that (loka), that there
is another called by Buddhists a “transcendental world" ( loka -
uttara) and that when language is forced to be used for things
of this world, lokottara, it becomes warped and assumes all
kinds of crookedness: oxymora, paradoxes, contradictions,
contortions, absurdities, oddities, ambiguities, and irrationali¬
ties. Language itself is not to be blamed for it. It is we our¬
selves who, ignorant of its proper functions, try to apply it to
that for which it was never intended. More than this, we
make fools of ourselves by denying the reality of a transcen¬
dental world ( lokottara ).

Let us see how impossible it is to bring a transcendental
world or an “inner power” onto the level of linguistic manage¬
ability.

There is something, transcending the soul’s created nature, not
accessible to creature, non-existent; no angel has gotten it for his
is a clear 11 nature, and clear and overt things have no concern
with this. It is akin to Deity, intrinsically one, having naught in

« Ibid., p. 37.

»"Bin lultr uesen ” in German. Luttr mean* "intellectually or
analytically clear and distinct," opposed to what may be called ‘‘meta¬
physically indefinite.”

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 57

common with naught. Many a priest finds it a baffling thing.
It is one; rather unnamed than named, rather unknown than
known. If thou couldst naught thyself an instant, less than an
instant, I should say, all that this is in itself would belong to thee.
But while thou dost mind thyself at all thou knowest no more of
God than my mouth docs of colour or my eye of taste: so little
thou knowest, thou disccrncst, what God is. 50

What “a baffling thing” this “something” or “somewhat”
is! But it is no doubt a light and if you can get a glimpse into
it even “less than an instant” you will be master of yourself.
Plato describes the light in the following words: It is “a light
which is not in this world; not in the world and not out of
the world; not in time nor in eternity; it has neither in nor
out.” 20 Linguistically considered, how could a thing be said
to be “neither in the world nor in out-of-the-world”? Nothing
can be more absurd than this. But, as Eckhart says (Evans, p.
227), when we transcend time (zit), body (liplicheit ), and
multiplicity (manicvaltikeit ), 21 we reach God, and these three
things arc the very principle of linguistics. No wonder that
when things of the lokottara try to find their expression
through language, the latter shows every trace of its shortcom¬
ings. This is the reason why Zen Buddhism strives to avoid the
use of language and quite frequently denounces our short¬
sightedness in this respect. Zen does not object to language just
for the sake of opposition, it simply realizes that there is a
field in which our words fail to communicate events taking
place there. One of the statements Zen is always ready to
make is: “No depending on words.” Ycngo, commentator of

19 Evans, pp. 204-5.

*° Quoted by Eckhart, Evans, p. 205.

*» Pfeiffer, p. 296.

C

58 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

the Hekigan-shu (“Blue Rock Collection”), a work of the
Sung dynasty, thus remarks:

Bodhidharma observing that the Chinese minds are matured
enough to accept teachings of Mahayana Buddhism came over
here [China] via the southern route and started to prepare the
people for "the transmission of mind-seal.” He said, “I am not
going to build up a system of thought which depends on letters
or words. I want straightforwardly to direct you to the Mind
itself and thereby to see into the Buddha-nature and attain
Buddhahood. When Zen is understood in this way, we shall be
able to attain freedom. Let us not therefore follow the way of
letters of any kind, let us take hold of Reality in its nakedness.
To the question of Wu the Emperor of the Liang, Bodhidharma
simply answered, "I do not know, your Majesty!" When Eka,
who became the second patriarch of Zen in China, confessed that
he could not locate the Mind, Bodhidharma exclaimed, "There,
I have your Mind pacified!” In all these situations which con¬
fronted him, Bodhidharma just faced them without hesitation,
with no prepared answers concocted beforehand, he had nothing
premeditated or deliberately schematized in his concept-filled
mind. With one swing of the sword he cut asunder every obstacle
that lay in our way, thereby releasing us from the fetters of
linguistic discrimination. We arc now no more to be troubled
with right and wrong, gain and loss.”

The following mondo ” will demonstrate how free Zen is
in dealing, for instance, with the ultimate problem of being:

A monk asked Daizui Hoshin of the T’ang dynasty: “I am
told that at the end of the universe a great fire takes place
and everything is destroyed. May I ask you whether or not,
‘this’ also shares the fate?”

”A more or leu modernized interpretation given to Yengo’s terse
and loosely knit Chinese.

22 Literally, “question and answer."

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 59

Daizui replied, “Yes, it docs.”

The monk went on, “If this is the case, it must be said that
‘this’ follows others.”

Daizui: “Yes, it does.”

The same question was later asked of another master whose
name was Shu, Shu the master answered, “No, it docs not.”
When he was asked “Why not?” the master replied, ‘‘Because
it identifies itself with the whole universe.”

From the logical linguistic point of view the two Zen mas¬
ters defy each other and there is no way to effect a reconcilia¬
tion. One says “yes” while the other says “no.” As long as the
“no” means an unqualified negation and the ‘“yes” an un¬
qualified affirmation, there is no bridge between the two. And
if this is the case, as apparently it is, how can Zen permit the
contradiction and continue the claim for its consistent teach¬
ing, one may ask. But Zen would serenely go its own way
without at all heeding such a criticism. Because Zen’s first con¬
cern is about its experience and not its modes of expression.
The latter allow a great deal of variation, including paradoxes,
contradictions, and ambiguities. According to Zen, the ques¬
tion of “is-ncss” ( isticheil) is settled only by innerly experienc¬
ing it and not by merely arguing about it or by linguistically
appealing to dialectical subtleties. Those who have a genuine
Zen experience will all at once recognize in spite of superficial
discrepancies what is true and what is not.

VI

Before I come to another utterance to be ascribed to Buddha
at the time of his enlightenment-experience I cannot refrain
from considering the problem of time. This is also closely
related to linguistics and the Eckhartian treatment of the

60 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

creation-myth. As Augustine confesses, we can also say that
God “mocks at man” when the question of time confronts us.
It is one of the subjects of discourse we must “familiarly and
knowingly” take up. “And we understand when we speak of
it, we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another.”

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to
explain it to one who asketh, I know not: yet I say boldly that
if nothing passes away, time past were not; and if nothing were
coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time
present were not. Those two times then, past and to come, how
are they, seeing the past now is not, and that to come is not yet?
But the present, should it always be present, and never pass into
time past, verily it should not be time, but eternity. If time pres¬
ent (if it is not time) only cometh into existence, because it
passeth into time past, how can we say that either this is, whose
cause of being is, that it shall not be; so, namely, that we cannot
truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to be? 14

Time is really an eternally puzzling problem, especially when
it is handled at the level of linguistics. As far as linguistics is
concerned, the best way to approach the question will be as
Eckhart suggests, to consider human beings bom “between
one and two. The one is eternity, ever alone and without
variation. The two is time, changing and given to multiplica¬
tion.” “ Following this line of thought, Eckhart goes on to say
in another sermon on “poverty”:

. . . therefore, I am my own first cause, both of my eternal
being and of my temporal being. To this end I was bom, and by
virtue of my birth being eternal, I shall never die. It is of the
nature of this eternal birth that I have been eternally, that I am

14 St. Augustine, Confessions. Book XI, 14.

** Evans, p. 134.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 61

now, and shall be forever. What I am as a temporal creature is
to die and come to nothingness, for it came with time and so with
time it will pass away. In my eternal birth, however, everything
was begotten. I was my own first cause as well as the first cause
of everything else. If I had willed it, neither I nor the world
would have come to be! If I had not been, there would have
been no god. There is, however, no need to understand this. 2 *

Whatever Eckhart might have meant by the statement,
“There is, however, no need to understand this,” it is impos¬
sible from the purely linguistic point of view “to understand”
the interpenetration or interfusion of time and eternity as de¬
scribed here. Primarily the two concepts, time and eternity, are
irreconcilable, and however much dialectical skill one may
employ, they can never be brought peacefully together. Eck¬
hart and all other thinkers and non-thinkers may try all their
arts to convince us of “the truth,” but as long as we are on
this side of the stream, we cannot be expected to understand
it. This is perhaps what Eckhart means when he says there is
no necessity for achieving the impossible. What then does he
wish us to do? What he wishes is to turn away from linguistics,
to shake off the shackles of “time and matter and multiplicity”
and to plunge right into the abyss of nameless nothingness. For
it is at the very moment of the plunge that the experience of
enlightenment takes place and the understanding comes upon
us. “I am that I was and that I shall remain now and forever.
Then I receive an impulse which carries me above all angels.
In this impulse I conceive such passing riches that I am not
content with God as being God, as being all his godly works,
for in this breaking-through I find that God and I are both

*• Blainey, p. 231.

62 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

the same. Then I am what I was, I neither wax nor wane, for
I am the motionless cause that is moving all things.” JT
When this—regarding my self—is understood, we shall also
be led to understand what Augustine says about God: “God
is doing today all that shall be done in the thousands upon
thousands of years of the future—if the world is to last so
long— an d that God is still doing today all he ever did in the
many thousands of years of past.” 18
Now, both Eckhart and Augustine ask, “What can I do
about it if anyone does not understand that?” or “If these
words arc misconstrued, what can one who puts their right
construction on them do about it?" 59 To this, Eckhart answers
consolingly: “If anyone does not understand this discourse, let
him not worry about that, for if he does not find this truth in
himself he cannot understand what I have said—for it is a
discovered truth 50 which comes immediately from the heart
of God." 31 The only thing that is left for us to do will be to
follow Eckhart’s advice and pray to God: “That we all may
so live as to experience it eternally, may God help us! Amen.”

The Zen way of treating the problem of time will be partly
glimpsed from the following story which contrasts significantly
with the linguistic analysis:

Tokusan (790-865), on his way to Taisan, felt hungry and
tired and stopped at a roadside teahouse and asked for refresh¬
ments. The old woman who kept the house, finding that Toku¬
san was a great student of the Diamond Sutra, said: “I have

37 Evans, p. 221.

** Blakncy, p. 72.

Ibid., pp. 72. 73.

30 "Ein unbedahtiu warheit" (Pfeiffer, p. 284), that is, a truth not
premeditated but spontaneously coming to mind.

»»Blakncy, p. 232.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 63

a question to ask you; if you can answer it I will serve you
refreshments for nothing, but if you fail you have to go some¬
where else for them.” As Tokusan agreed, the woman pro¬
posed this: “In the Diamond Sutra we read that ‘The past
mind is unattainable; the present mind is unattainable; the
future mind is unattainable’; and so, what mind do you wish
to punctuate?” (Refreshments arc known in Chinese as
t’ten-hsin or ten-jin in Japanese, meaning “punctuating the
mind,” hence the question.) Tokusan was altogether non¬
plused and did not know how to answer. He had to go with¬
out anything to eat.* 2

Taking refreshments takes place in time. Out of time there
is no taking of anything. The old teahouse keeper now asks
the traveling monk what time he will use for recuperating
from fatigue when, according to the Sutra, no time, past or
future or present, is “obtainable.” When there is no time how
can one accomplish anything? As far as thought is concerned,
that is, where language is supreme, no movement of any sort
is possible in this life, and yet the strangest fact is that we keep
on living in the fullest sense of the term. The old lady is not a
metaphysician, nor is she at all interested in metaphysics. But
when she saw how inextricably the young man was involved
in verbalism and in its intricate complexities she wanted to
rescue him, hence the question. And sure enough he never
thought of this possibility. Finding himself in the midst of con¬
tradiction, he knew not how to clear himself out of the trap
which was of his own construction. He had to go without his
refreshments.

Zen is very much interested in the problem of the absolute
now-moment, but its interest is more along the practical line

32 Studies in Zen, p. 126.

64 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

and not in its dialectics. Therefore, as in Ummon’s “sermon*’
on “the fifteenth day of the month,” the Zen masters want to
have us “say a word” (ikku or i-chii in Chinese). The saying
is not necessarily uttering any sound, it is acting of some kind.
In Eckhart’s term, the trick is to insert “the soul’s day” into
“God’s day” (Blakney, p. 212). God’s day is characterized as
containing all time in the present now-moment [in time
gegenwiirtigen nu]. ss To God, “a day, whether six thousand
years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday." We, of
another kind of day where yesterday is yesterday and one
thousand years is one thousand times more than a year, cither
to the past or to the future, cannot have God’s day operative
in our everyday living. But if we do not somehow succeed in
making “was” or “will be” turn into “is,” we cannot have
peace of mind, we cannot escape from dread, which is a topic
current among existentially minded modern men. They must
somehow have “the refreshment” served. To have and yet not
to have must really be the cause for worry and anxiety.

I will quote a Zen sermon to show how it differs from
those sermons given by Eckhart, though it treats the same sub¬
ject of time and eternity and the basic ideas do not differ so
widely as they superficially appear. The Zen sermon was given
by Daito the national teacher (1282-1337) of the fourteenth
century who was the first abbot of the Daitoku monastery,
Kyoto. A Zen sermon generally begins with a mondo between
the master and one of the disciples when the sermon proper is
very short consisting of about a dozen lines rhetorically com¬
posed. The occasion was a New Year’s Eve. When Daito the

" Pfeiffer, p. 265.

34 From the Sayings of DailO Kokushi.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 65

master appeared in the Dharma Hall, a disciple came forward
and proposed the following question:

“The new does not know that the old is already gone while
the old does not know that the new is already come. The new
and the old have not made acquaintance with each other.
Thus they stand in opposition all over the world. Is this the
state of affairs we greet on all side?”

The master said, “All over the universe.” ”

The monk continued, “When the world has not yet come
into existence,” how do we find a passage to it?”

The master: “Wc fold the hands before the monastery
gate.”

The monk: “Anything further?”

The master: "We burn incense at the Buddha Hall.”

The monk: “I understand that, anciently, Hokuzen roasted
the big white bullock 57 that used to roam at the monastery
courtyard and gave a feast to his monks to celebrate this
memorable occasion. I wonder what kind of feast we are
going to get this New Year’s Eve?”

The master: “When you chew it fine, it tastes sweeter than
honey.”

The monk: “In this case we of the Brotherhood will ap¬
preciate your generosity.”

As the monk bowing began to step back the master said,
“What a fine golden-haired lion!” **

The master now gives his regular sermon: “The old year
passes away this evening. Let things go that are to go and

SJ The original literally hat, “The thirty-three heavens and the twenty-
eight constellations."

*• Literally, “When the firework has not yet been cracked.”

* T "The white bullock" is the symbol for the Highest Reality.

18 This is a more or less ironical remark on the part of the master.

66 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

grow old. The new year is ushered in at this dawn. Let things
come that are to come and be renewed. The new and the old
arc intermingled in every possible way, and each of us enjoys
himself as he pleases. Causes and effects go on in time-
sequence, and everywhere activities in every form manifest
themselves freely and autonomously. Thus we observe the
peak of Mount Ryuho magnificently towering to the sky, while
the monastery gate opens to a field limitlessly expanding. This
is not altogether due to the peaceful time alone we now enjoy
under the wisely governing reign. It is in the order of things
that the spirit of universal friendliness pervade all around us.
At this moment what lines shall I quote for your edification?”

The master struck the seat with his hossu and said, “The
December snows filling up to the horizon make all things look
white, while the spring winds blowing against the doors are
still severely cold.”

According to the lunar calendar, the thirtieth day of the
twelfth month (December) is the end of winter and as soon
as twelve o’clock is struck spring is ushered in. Hence Daito’s
reference to December snows and spring winds. They arc both
there: the winter snows do not melt away when spring starts.
The spring breeze passes over the same old winter snows. The
old and the new are mingled. The past and the present arc
fused. The imaginary line of season exists only in human lan¬
guage. We for some practical purposes distinguish seasons.
When this is once done one season must definitely start in such
and such time of the year. While the snow lies white, it does
not make haste to greet spring and the wind does not wait for
winter to make way for it. The old continues on to the new
and the new is ready to join the old. Zen’s absolute present is
probably not so inaccessible as Eckhart’s.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 67
VII

It is now time, after these lengthy excursions, to come back
to the original topic and see if wc cannot get once more into
the subjective approach to Buddha’s experience of enlighten¬
ment. The experience cannot merely be designated as a kind
of feeling and thus done away with as if this designation ex¬
hausted all the contents of enlightenment. For, as I under¬
stand it, the enlightenment cannot be said to be devoid of any
noetic elements which yield to a certain extent to a linguistic
and intellectual treatment. The feeling of enlightenment has
something profoundly fundamental and gives one a sense of
absolute certainty and finality which is lacking in the ordinary
kind of feeling we generally have. A feeling may occasionally
give one the sense of exaltation and self-assurance, but this
will after a while pass away and may leave no permanent
effect on the being of one who has the experience. The en¬
lightenment feeling on the other hand affects the whole per¬
sonality, influencing his attitude toward life and the world not
only morally and spiritually but in his metaphysical interpre¬
tation of existence as a whole. Buddha’s experience was not
just a matter of feeling which moves on the periphery of con¬
sciousness, but something awakened in the deepest recesses of
a human being. In this sense only is his utterance recorded in
the Vinaya and the Majjhima Nikdya and elsewhere to be
understood. In the gdthd already quoted above from The
Dhammapada (vv. 153, 154), something similar to the one
below is noticeable, but the positive and dynamic aspect comes
forward more strongly and conspicuously in the following: 80

I have conquered and I know all,

»* The Vinaya, I, p. 8. The Majjhima Nikaya (translated by Lord
Chalmers, published by Oxford University Press), 26 , p. 12 .

68

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

I am enlightened quite by myself and have
none as teacher.

There is no one that is the same as I in the whole
world where there arc many deities.

I am the one who is really worth,

I am the most supreme teacher.

I am the only one who is fully enlightened.

I am tranquillized.

I am now in Nirvana.* 0

This victory song is expressive of the supreme moment of
the enlightenment-experience which Buddha had. In the first
verse depicting the discovery of the gahakdraka (house¬
builder) and the demolition of his handiwork, we sec the
negative aspect of Buddha’s experience, while in the second
one dealing with the exalted feeling of victory, the realization
of the highest knowledge ( prajna ) and the consciousness of
one’s own value as he is, we see.its positive aspect coming out
in full view.

The consciousness of conquest such as was awakened in the
mind of Buddha at the time of enlightenment cannot be re¬
garded as the product of a self-conceit which is often cherished
by minds tarnished with schizophrenia and the wielders of
political or military powers. With him however whose ego-
centered desires have been shattered to pieces the conscious¬
ness of victory rises from the deepest sources of being. So the
feeling of conquest is not the outcome of a struggle of powers

40 It will be interesting to note that we have another githd in Tht
Dhammapada, v. 353, which also echoes the same sentiment as the one
here quoted from another source. It is possible that they are from one
and the same original source. Tht Dhammapada one runs thus:

I have conquered all. I know all, in all conditions of life I am free
from taint. I have left all, and through the destruction of thirst I am
free. Having by myself attained specific knowledge, to whom can I
point as my teacher?

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 69

belonging to the low level of existence. The enlightenment-
experience is the manifestation of a higher power, a higher
insight, a higher unification. It is beyond the sphere of relative
consciousness which is the battleground for forces belonging to
the same order. One force may temporarily proclaim its vic¬
tory over another, but this kind of victory is sure before long
to be superseded by another. This is in the nature of our rela¬
tive consciousness. Enlightenment is the experience a man can
have only when a higher realm of unification is revealed, that

is, when the most fundamental basis of identification is reached.

The enlightenment-experience, therefore, is the one which

we can have only when we have climbed up to the highest
peak from which we can survey the whole field of Reality. Or
we can say that it is the experience which is attained only
when we have touched the very bedrock which sustains the
entire system of multiple worlds. Here is the consciousness of
intensive quantity to which nothing more could be added. All
is fulfilled, satisfied; everything here appears to it such as it is;
in short, it is a state of absolute Suchncss, of absolute Empti¬
ness which is absolute fullness.

Buddhist philosophy, therefore, is the philosophy of Such¬
ness, or philosophy of Emptiness, or philosophy of Self-identity.
It starts from the absolute present which is pure experience,
an experience in which there is yet no differentiation of sub¬
ject and object, and yet which is not a state of sheer nothing¬
ness. The experience is variously designated: in Japanese it is
sono-mama; in Chinese it is chih mo, sometimes tzu-jan fa-erh
(Japanese: jinen honi ); there are many technical names for

it, each denoting its specific features or characters as it is
viewed in various relationships.

In fact, this Suchness, or “is-ness” ( isticheit) in Eckhart’s

70 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

terminology, defies all characterization or denotation. No
words can express what it is, but as words are the only instru¬
ment given us human beings to communicate our thought, we
have to use words, with this caution: Nothing is available for
our purpose; to say “not available” ( anupalabda in Sanskrit
and pu k’o te in Chinese) is not to the point cither. Nothing is
acceptable. To say it is, is already negating itself. Suchncss
transcends everything, it has no moorings. No concepts can
reach it, no understanding can grasp it. Therefore, it is called
pure experience.

In pure experience there is no division between “ought” and
“is,” between form and matter or content, and therefore there
is no judgment in it yet. There is the Christ who says “I am
before Abraham was,” or God who has not yet uttered his fiat.
This is Buddha who, according to The Dhammapada (179),
is the anantagocara (“one whose limits are infinite”), the
apada (“the pathless”), whose conquest can never be con¬
quered again and into whose conquest nobody in this world
can enter, and who is where there is no track leading to it. If
it were a Zen master, he would demand that you show your
face, however ugly it might be, which you have even before
your birth into this world of multiplicities.

The Buddhist philosophy of Suchness thus starts with what
is most primarily given to our consciousness—which I have
called pure experience. But, in point of fact, to say “pure ex¬
perience” is to commit oneself to something already posited
somewhere, and thus it ceases to be pure. The Dhammapada
reflects this thought when it designates the starting point of
Buddhist philosophy as trackless {apada), unboundable ( an¬
antagocara ), abodcless ( aniketa ), empty (suhha), formless
(animilta ), delivered ( vimokkha ). In psychological terms, it

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 71

is described thus: sorrowlcss ( vippamutta ), released on all
sides ( sabbaganthappahma ), fearless ( asantasin ), without
craving (vitatanha). These psychological terms arc apt to be
very much misunderstood because they point to negativism
when superficially and linguistically interpreted. But I will not
dwell upon this here.

One thing that must be noted in this connection is that pure
experience is not pure passivity. In fact there is nothing we
can call pure passivity. This docs not make sense and does not
lead us anywhere. As long as passivity is also an experience,
there must be one who experiences passivity. This one, this ex-
pcriencer, is an actor. Not only is he an actor, but he is a
knower, for he is conscious of experiencing. Pure experience is
not an abstraction or a state of passivity. It is very much active,
and creative. Eckhart voices this idea when he states: “In this
sense thy unknowing is not a defect but thy chief perfection,
and suffering thy highest activity. Kill thy activities and still
thy faculties if thou wouldst realize this birth in thee.” 41

Another thing I should like to emphasize in this gdtha of
conquest is that Buddha calls himself “all-conqueror” and also
“all-knower,” showing that his victory is absolute and that his
knowledge is not at all fragmentary. He is omniscient as well
as omnipotent. His experience has something noetic and at the
same time something conative or affective, reflecting the na¬
ture of Reality itself which consists in prajnd and karund. As
regards prajnd, which is sometimes translated as “transcen¬
dental wisdom,” I have written about it elsewhere. Therefore
I shall speak here about karund. Karund corresponds to love.

41 Evans, p. 14 . “This birth” in this sermon meani "the newborn
Being" or “the child of man turned into the child of God." It also means
"hearing of the Word” which is revealed to “one who knows aright in
unknowing.”

72 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

It is like the sands on the Ganges: they are trampled by all
kinds of beings: by elephants, by lions, by asses, by human
beings, but they do not make any complaints. They are again
soiled by all kinds of filth scattered by all kinds of animals, but
they just suffer them all and never utter a word of ill-will.
Eckhart would declare the sands on the Ganges to be “just”
(gerecht), because “the just have no will at all: whatever God
wishes it is all one to them, however great the discomfort may
be.” 42

The just are so firmly devoted to justice and so wholly selfless
that whatever they do, they regard neither the pains of hell nor
the joys of heaven. ... To the just person, nothing is so hard
to bear or so painful as anything opposed to justice, that is to
say, as not feeling impartially the same about everything that
happens.**

“Justice” savors a great deal of legalism contrary to the idea
of love. But when, as Eckhart interprets it, justice is considered
from the affective point of view as meaning “impartiality,”
“sameness,” “universality,” or “all-embracing,” it begins to
approach the Buddhist idea of karund. I may add that Mahii-
yana Buddhism further developed the idea of karund into that
of pranidhdna or purva pranidhdna and made each one of the
Bodhisattvas an incarnation of a certain number of pranid¬
hdna, for example, Amitabha has forty-eight pranidhdna,
Samantabhadra has ten, and Ksitigarbha also has ten. Pranid¬
hdna is generally translated as “vow” or “fervent wish” or
“prayer,” or simply “the will,” but these English terms do not
convey the fuH meaning of the Sanskrit as it is used in the
Mahayana. Roughly speaking, we may interpret pranidhdna

41 Blakney, p. 179.

** Ibid.

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

73

as love specified or itemized or particularized and made ap¬
plicable to each practical situation in which we may find our¬
selves in the course of an individual life. Amitabha has his
Pure Land where he wants us to be born; ManjuSri is the
Bodhisattva of prajna and whoever comes to him will be re¬
warded with an amount of transcendental wisdom.

This being the case, we will see that “the destruction of
desires or cravings (tanhanam khayam) so much emphasized
in the teaching of earlier Buddhism is not to be understood
ncgativistically. The Buddhist training consists in transform¬
ing trisna ( tanhd) into karund, ego-centered love into some¬
thing universal, cros into agape.

When Joshu (778-897) was asked, “Could Buddha cherish
any desires ( kleSa )?” he answered, “Yes, he decidedly has.”
The questioner demanded, “How could that be?” The master
replied, “His desire is to save the whole universe.”

One day Joshu had another visitor who asked, “I hear so
much of the stone bridge reputed to be on one of the sites in
your monastery grounds. But as I see it, it is no more than
an old log. How is that?”

The master said, “You see the log and don’t sec the stone
bridge.”

“What is the stone bridge, then?” the visitor demanded.

The master’s answer was, “It permits horses to pass and
also asses to pass.”

Someone’s pranidhana is too rickety for safe crossing
whereas the other’s is strong and broad, allowing anything to
pass over it safely. Let tanhd be destroyed but we must not for¬
get that it has another root which reaches the very ground of
being. The enlightenment-experience must realize that, though
ordinarily Buddhists arc more or less neglectful in bringing out

74 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

the karund aspect of the experience. This is due to their being
too anxious and therefore too much in a hurry to destroy all
the obstacles lying on the way to enlightenment, for they know
that when this is accomplished what is to come therefrom is
left to itself as it knows full well how to take care of it. When
the devastating fire is extinguished the forest will not wait for
any external help but will resume its biological functions by
itself. When a man is shot by a poisonous arrow the first thing
to do is to remove it before it is embedded too deeply into the
flesh. When this is done the body will heal the wound by its
own power of vitality. So with human passions, the first work
is to destroy their root of ignorance and egoism. When this is
thoroughly accomplished, the Buddha-nature which coasists
in prajna and karund will start its native operation. The prin¬
ciple of Suchncss is not static, it is full of dynamic forces.

Let me finish this study on Buddha’s enlightenment-experi¬
ence by quoting another from Daito Kokushi’s Sayings. In
Japan and China Buddha is recorded to have attained his en¬
lightenment on the morning of December the eighth. After a
period of deeply absorbed meditation he happened to look
skyward and there he noticed the morning star shining brightly.
This at once caused something like a flash of lightning to pass
through his consciousness, which put a final stop to his quest
for the truth. He felt as if all the burden which he had been
carrying dropped off his shoulders and a long sigh of relief
came out of his being. The Zen Buddhists are specially mind¬
ful of remembering this event and a commemoration always
takes place on December the eighth.

When Daito the national teacher appeared in the Dharma

THE BASIS OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 75

Hall, a monk came oul of the rank and started a series of
questions:

“The record has it that the Bodhisattva attained enlighten¬
ment today and that since then he is known as Tathagata. But
what took place in his mind when he saw the morning star?
What did he understand?”

The teacher replied: “Thoroughly clean! Utterly blank!”
The monk: “Even when there is one speck of dust in your
eye, docs it not make you see all kinds of imaginary flowers in
the air?”

Teacher: “Don’t be too talkative!”

Monk: “Would you approve my going on along this line?”
Teacher: “You ask my staff which knows better than I.”
Monk: “Things arc going on today just as they did in the
past; why refuse to approve my ease?”

Teacher: “It’s only because there still is a dualism.”

Monk: “If not for this remark I should surely have missed
your point.”

Teacher: “You beat me with your argument.”

Monk: “When one is genuinely sincere one has nothing to
be ashamed of.”

Teacher: “There arc many like you.” 44

Daito the national teacher then gave a short sermon:

The moon is clear and serene,

The stars are shining bright.

No Sakyamuni is here,

And whose enlightenment arc we talking about?

He now held his staff up straight and declared: “It is piling
filth over filth.”

44 These questions and answers may sound somewhat enigmatic to most
of our readers. A full explanation will be given elsewhere on a more
opportune occasion.

III.

“A Little Point” and Satori

i

MEISTER ECKHART is quoted in Inge’s Mysticism in Re¬
ligion (p. 39):

The union of the soul with God is far more inward than that
of the soul and body. . . . Now, I might ask, how stands it with
the soul that is lost in God? Does the soul find herself or not?
To this I will answer as it appears to me, that the soul finds her¬
self in the point where every rational being understands itself
with itself. Although it sinks in the eternity of the divine essence,
yet it can never reach the ground. Therefore God has left a little
point wherein the soul turns back upon itself and finds itself, and
knows itself to be a creature.

An interesting controversy arises regarding “a little point”
referred to in this passage from Eckhart. I do not know where
Dean Inge found the passage. It would be desirable to know
the entire context where it occurs, if we would discuss the
point fully, but we can somehow proceed according to the ex¬
tent of our general knowledge of Eckhartian philosophy. One
person insists that Eckhart here tells us about the human im¬
possibility of reaching the ground of Reality or “the inmost

76

“a little point” and satori

77

core [grund] of the divine nature.” According to this interpre¬
tation, there is an impassable gap between “every rational
being” and “the eternity of the divine essence”; God provides
us, therefore, with “a little point” whereby we rational beings
are made to turn upon ourselves and realize that we are after
all finite creatures and barred forever from sinking into "the
core of God” or “the essence of God.”

The other person’s way of thinking runs along the following
line: Judging from the whole trend of Eckhart's ideas as ex¬
pressed in his sermons, he docs not necessarily mean here that
the gap between the divine ground and ourselves is absolutely
impassable; on the contrary, he implies that he himself crossed
the gap and came back to this side of rationality. This person
will insist that if Eckhart did not cross the impassable himself
how could he say that “God has left a little point” as if he
were God himself? Or, logically speaking, when Eckhart says
that there is a gap and that the gap is impassable, he must
have already been there and seen the gap and actually sur¬
veyed it and found it impassable.

In our relative way of thinking, the finite is sharply differ¬
entiated from the infinite, they cannot be made one, there is
no way of unifying them. But when we analyze the concept
closer, we find that one implies or participates in the other and
that because of this implication or participation the one be¬
comes separable from the other in our thought. Disintegration
is possible because of integration, and vice versa. It is in this
sense that the finite is infinite and the infinite is finite.

But here is a subtle point over which we must take care not
to slip: When we say that the finite is infinite, it does not mean
that the finite as it stands relatively as finite is infinite and so
with the infinite; they pass into each other and become one

78 mysticism: Christian and buddhxst

when all ideas of relativity arc wiped away. But we must be
quite cautious not to undertake this wiping away on the rela¬
tive plane, for in this ease there will have to be another wiping
away and this may go on eternally. This is where many intel¬
lectuals stumble and become victims of their own cleverness.

When they talk about an impassable gap and a point where¬
in we are made to turn back, they forget that by this very talk
they arc already crossing the impassable and find themselves
on the other side. It is due to their discriminating habit of
thought that the impassable is always left on the other side
while they are actually there. We are possessed of the habit of
looking at Reality by dividing it into two; even when we have
in all actuality the thing we spend time in discussing and then
finally come to the conclusion that we have it not. It is all due
to the human habit of splitting one solid Reality into two, and
the result is that my “have” is no “have” and my “have not”
is no “have not.” While we are actually passing, we insist that
the gap is impassable.

When Eckhart says that “God has left a little point,” this
is, according to my understanding, to remind us of the fact
that we arc all finite beings, that is, “creatures,” and there¬
fore that as such we “can never reach the ground.” But inas¬
much as we are “sinking in the eternity of the divine essence”
we arc already on the ground. This is where we are God him¬
self. It is only when we see the “little point” left by God that
we return to ourselves and know that we are creatures. This
seeing is splitting and all forms of bifurcation take place and
we arc no more God, we are no more, as Eckhart says, “One
to one, one from One, one in One and the One in one, eter¬
nally.” This is “where time comes in and all the properties of
things which belong to time—existing beside the timeless.” 1
1 Blakney, p. 81 .

“a little point” and satori

79

Wc all make time sit beside timelessness. But why not time in
timelessness and timclcssncss in time?

ii

“A little point” left by God corresponds to what Zen Bud¬
dhists would call satori. When wc strike this point wc have a
satori. To have a satori means to be standing at Eckhart’s
“point” where wc can look in two directions: God-way and
creature-way. Expressed in another form, the finite is infinite
and the infinite is finite. This “little point” is full of signifi¬
cance and I am sure Eckhart had a satori.

Eckhart’s "little point” is the eye, that is to say, “The eye
by which I sec God is the same as the eye by which God sees
me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same—one in see¬
ing, one in knowing, and one in loving.” 2 Eckhart says: “If
my eye is to distinguish colors, it must first be free from any
color impressions. If I sec blue or white, the seeing of my eyes
is identical with what is seen.” If the seeing is the seen and the
seen is the seeing, the “sinking in the eternity of the divine
essence” is the "reaching the ground,” for there cannot be any
“ground" which “is beside the timeless,” the ground is the
divine essence, and the sinking is reaching.

What makes us however think that Eckhart really advocates
the doctrine of impassablencss is that here he seems to remind
us of our being creatures more than of our being one with God
or our coming from the core (or grund ) of the divine nature.
The “little point” here referred to is made to turn us around
back to our finite creaturelincss, but the fact is that the point
can readily be made to turn the other way leading us straight

2 Ibid., p. 206.

80 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

to the Godhead. Eckhart calls the one who can achieve this
wonder the aristocrat ( Edel ), and defines him:

So I say that the aristocrat is one who derives his being, his
life, and his happiness from God alone, with God and in God
and not at all from his knowledge, perfection, or love of God, or
any such thing. Thus our Lord says very well that life eternal is
to know God as the only true God and not that it is knowledge
that God may be known. 3

According to this, Eckhart distinguishes two kinds of knowl¬
edge: one is to know God as the only true God and the other
is to know God through knowledge about him. The second
kind is “twilight knowledge in which creation is perceived by
clearly distinguished ideas”; while the first kind is “daybreak
knowledge” where “creatures are known in God,” and “in
which creatures are perceived without distinctions, all ideas be¬
ing rejected, all comparisons done away in that One that God
himself is.” 4 Cannot this kind of knowledge be called also the
knowledge of impassableness? Is this not what a man gets
when the “little point” makes him turn around God-way in
which all creatures, all distinctions, all comparisons, all ideas
are done away with, leaving God to be in himself and with
himself?

Eckhart states in “The Aristocrat,” from which the above
quotations are culled:

Neither the One, nor being, nor God, nor rest, nor blessedness,
nor satisfaction is to be found where distinctions are. Be there¬
fore that One so that you may find God. And of course, if you
are wholly that One, you shall remain so, even where distinctions

» Ibid., p. 80.

* Ibid., p. 79.

“a little point” and satori 81

are. Different things will all be parts of that One to you and will
no longer stand in your way. 8

Where distinctions arc you cannot find “the One” or “Being,”
but when you are “that One,” “wholly that One,” all distinc¬
tions or all different things may be left as they are and will all
be parts of that One and offer you no hindrances, to use
Kegon phraseology. To tell the truth, however, distinctions
can never remain as distinctions if they were not made “parts
of that One,” though as far as I am concerned I do not like
the term “parts” in connection with the One. “All different
things” arc not parts but they arc the One itself, they are not
parts as if they, when put together, would produce the whole.
“Parts” is a treacherous term.

Eckhart continues: “The One remains the same One in
thousands of thousands of stones as much as in four stones: a
thousand times a thousand is just as simple a number as four.”
This idea of number is really at the bottom of the doctrine of
impassableness. The idea of distinguishing passable from im¬
passable, or finite from infinite, is derived from the notion of
duality, of one divided into two, and these two as standing
absolutely against each other, or as contradicting each other,
or as irreconcilably excluding each other—which makes it im¬
possible to go over to the other. The One does not belong in
the category of number, yet the intellectually strained mind
tries to pull it down to its own level. Language is a useful
means of communication and expression, but when we try to
use it for the deepest experience man can have we trap our¬
selves and do not know how to extricate ourselves. Eckhart is
troubled in the same way as we can see in the following extracts.

8 Ibid., p. 78.

82 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

I say that when a man looks at God, he knows it and knows
that he is the knower. That is to say, lie knows it is God he is
looking at and knows that he knows him. Now some people wish
it to appear that the flower, the kernel of blessing is this aware¬
ness of the spirit, that it is knowing God. For if I have rapture
and am unconscious of it, what good would it do and what would
it mean? I cannot agree with this position. 8

According to this, Eckhart is apparently not satisfied with
merely knowing God and being conscious of this knowing on
the part of the spirit, for he goes on to declare that spiritual
blessing consists in absolutely being absorbed in God and not
knowing it at all:

For granting that the soul could not be happy without it [that
is, being conscious of its own processes], still its happiness does
not consist in that; for the foundation of spiritual blessing is this:
that the soul look at God without anything between; here it re¬
ceives its being and life and draws its essence from the core
[grund] of God, unconscious of the knowledge-process, or love or
anything else. Then it is quite still in the essence of God, not
knowing at all where it is, knowing nothing but God.

Evidently here Eckhart thinks that knowing is something
between the knower and God, that being conscious of God’s
presence is not being “quite still in the essence of God,” and
therefore that there is no foundation here on which spiritual
blessing may be established. In this Eckhart is quite right if the
knowing of God is to be understood in the way we generally
understand knowledge, as issuing from the relationship of sub¬
ject and object. As he says, “When the soul is aware that it is
looking at God, loving him and knowing him, that already is
a retrogression, a quick retreat back to the upper level of the

• Md., p. 79.

“a little point” and satori 83

natural order of things.” 1 To be conscious of knowing God is
to know about God if this knowing follows the ordinary way
of knowledge-process. But what kind of knowledge docs he
wish us to understand by the knowledge referred to in the
following passage:

For a man must himself be One, seeking unity both in himself
and in the One, which means that he must sec God and God
only. And then he must “return,” which is to say, he must have
knowledge of God and be conscious of his knowledge.

What kind of knowledge docs he mean here? In this knowl¬
edge is there the division of subject and object? If this is the
knowledge of an absolute unity of God and man, what does
this “being coascious of his knowledge” imply? When Eckhart
then tells us that we “must have knowledge of God” and that
we must “return," docs this mean that we after all give up
“the foundation of spiritual blessing” and retreat to the natural
order of things? What difference could there be between “spir¬
itual blessing" and knowledge of absolute oneness? Is the rap¬
ture of spiritual bliss preferable to “stepping beyond creatures"
or “jumping past creatures" and knowing God? 8

Eckhart quotes John, 19:12, “A certain nobleman went out
into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to
return.” “The nobleman” means, according to Eckhart, “a
person who submits completely to God, giving up all he is and
has”; "to go out" means that he “has nothing more to do with
vanity ... to the extent that he is now pure being, goodness
and truth"; and then he has “daybreak knowledge in which
creatures are perceived without distinctions.” But, according
to Eckhart, this knowledge is not enough, the nobleman is to

T Ibid., pp. 79-80.

11 Ibid., p. 166.

84 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

be completely free from all forms of knowledge. And then Eck-
hart continues, “There will be no blessing except a man be
conscious of his vision and knowledge of God, but it is not the
will of God that I be blessed on that basis. If anyone will have
it otherwise, let him do so; I can only pity him.”

Eckhart is here deeply involved in contradictions. He ap¬
praises knowledge, then repudiates it, and finally takes it up
again as the thing desired. It is not apparently enough for the
nobleman “to go out” and he is advised “to return.” In his
process of going out and receiving a kingdom, mere knowl¬
edge of the oneness of God and himself is no more than know¬
ing about God. Such knowledge, it goes without saying, is far
from being satisfactory to anyone who in all sincerity seeks God.
The soul must “look at God without anything between” and
“receive its being and life and draw its essence from the core
[ grund] of God.” But when this is accomplished the nobleman
is “to return,” for he “must have knowledge of God and be
conscious of his knowledge.” Eckhart seems to be using knowl¬
edge in two different senses, one in a relative sense and the
other in the absolute. Hence this apparent confusion.

The real fact, however, is that as far as we are human beings
we cannot express in words our understanding of Reality in its
suchness. When we try to do so we arc inevitably involved in
a contradiction. Eckhart says, “God’s sight and mine arc far
different—utterly dissimilar.” 9 Inasmuch as he could make
this statement in regard to God’s sight as being utterly dis¬
similar to our human sight, he must be said to have had cer¬
tain knowledge of God which enabled him to bring these
tidings to the human world from the other shore, from “the

•Ibid., p. 81.

“a little point” and satori

85

inmost core of the divine nature in its solitude.” 10 “If I am to
see color, I must have that in me which is sensitive to color,
but I should never sec color if I did not have the essence of
color already.” 11 Unless God was not already with us, in us,
we could never know how dissimilar or how similar—which is
after all the same thing—God was to us. In this connection
Eckhart quotes St. Paul and St. John: “We shall know God
as we are known by him” and again, “We shall know God as
he is.” An image may be “dissimilar” to the object whose
image it is, but there is no doubt that it represents the original
and to that extent the image must be said to be “similar” to
the original. What makes the image an image is the presence
in it of the original and as such the image Is just as real as the
original. The original secs itself in the image as well as in itself.
Being in “dissimilarity” must be said to be only in similarity.
To realize this is the meaning of “returning.”

To quote Eckhart again, “The soul must step beyond or
jump past creatures if it is to know God.” 12 But to know God
is to know oneself as creature. To know God is “to go out” as
the Biblical nobleman docs according to Eckhart, and his “re¬
turning” means knowing oneself as creature by knowing God.
When the soul knows God it becomes conscious of its oneness
with God and at the same time it realizes how “dissimilar” it
is. The “going out" is “returning” and conversely. This circu¬
lar and contradictory movement characterizes our spiritual
experience. A Zen master once produced a staff before the
congregation and said: “If you have a staff I will give one to
you; if you do not I will take it away from you.” The giving

10 Ibid .

"Ibid., p. 168.

86 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

is the taking away, and the taking away is the giving. Another
master later gave his view, saying, “You all throw your staff
down!” As long as the staff crosses our way, the question of
similarity and dissimilarity, of passablcness and impassablc-
ncss will never be conclusively settled.

in

Eckhart’s idea of the ‘‘little point" which God left in order
to make us turn back to ourselves and realize that we are after
all creatures is highly suggestive and full of significance. Most
readers are apt to regard such a statement as this as not really
touching their own spiritual experience but as something gen¬
eral and impersonal which may be turned to a subject of
philosophical discourse. Of course there is no harm in this as
long as the statement is understood as reflecting one’s personal
experience in the matter.

Eckhart’s “little point,” according to my view, is not just a
point which stays stationary. It moves or rather revolves and
this movement is taking place all the time. That is to say, the
point is a living one and not a dead one. Therefore as soon
as we come to this point God may make us turn back toward
creaturcliness but at the same time he docs not forget to re¬
mind us of the other side of the point. If the point is stationary
and points just one way, we cannot even turn back to our¬
selves and find ourselves to be creatures. The reason we can
turn back is because we can move on and see into the ground
( grund) Of the divine nature. In fact, while going back to our
creaturcliness we are all the time carrying with us the ground
itself, for we cannot leave it behind as if it were something
which could be separated from us and left anywhere by the
roadside and perhaps picked up by somebody else. Creatureli-

“a little point” and satori 87

ness and Godliness must go hand in hand; wherever one is
found the other is also always there. To leave one behind
means killing the other as well as oneself. The “little point” is
a kind of axis around which we and God move. This truth
will be experienced when a man once actually reaches the
point. Then the problem of impassableness no longer remains
with him, he will never ask himself whether he can pass on or
not. He is what he was. To know the significance of the point
one must sec it, for God did not leave it where it is in order
to make philosophers or theologians argue about its presence
so as to help them advance the theories already constructed
in their own minds.

Some may say that if the “little point” exists only to make
us realize that we arc after all creatures, what is the use of
looking into the eternity of the divine essence? We all know
that we are creatures even before we come to the “little point.”
This is however no more than mere arguing for the sake of
arguing. We must remember that this seeing the “little point”
makes the greatest possible difference in the world. We arc
indeed different creatures, we arc not the same creatures any
longer after our encounter with the “little point.” We are now
creatures in God, with God, not creaturcly creatures. There
are those who think that the “little point” divides us from God
forever, and that when we are away from it we have eternally
left God on the other side of it. The fact is just the contrary.
When we turned back to ourselves after being accosted by the
“little point,” we have captured everything around there and
are carrying it all with us. If things were otherwise we should
all find ourselves deeply buried in the emptiness of the
Godhead, which means an end of our crcatureliness. For the

88 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
fullness of the Godhead can only be expressed in the creature-
liness of all beings.

I do not think it is justifiable to use this “little point” for
the support of the doctrine of impassableness. In other places
Eckhart gives us statements quite contradictory to the idea of
the “little point.” For instance, in one of his sermons, “Into
the Godhead,” 13 we have the following:

As long as the least of creatures absorb your attention, you will
see nothing of God, however little that creature may be. Thus,
in Book of Love, the soul says: “I have run around looking for
him my soul loves and found him not." She found angels and
many other things but not him her soul loved, but she goes on to
say: “After that, I went a little further and found him my soul
loves.” It was as if she said: “It was when I stepped beyond
creatures that I found my soul’s lover.” The soul must step
beyond or jump past creatures if it is to know God.

This sermon is given under the heading, “A little, and ye sec
me no more,” which means, according to Eckhart, "However
small it may be, if anything adheres to the soul, you cannot
see me,” that is, God. And: “Every creature seeks to become
like God. If there were no search for God, the heavens them¬
selves would not be revolving. If God were not in everything,
nature would not function nor would desire be in anything.”
And this desire is to sec God in his naked essence.

If all the shells were removed from the soul and all God’s
shells could be taken off too, he could give himself directly to the
soul without reserve. But as long as the soul's shells are intact—be
they ever so slight—the soul cannot see God. If anything, even
to the extent of a hairbreadth, came between the body and the

II Ibid., pp. 165 it uq.

“a little point” and satori 89

soul, there could be no true union of the two. If that is the case
with physical things, how much more true it is with spiritual!
Thus Boethius says: “If you want to know the straight truth,
put away joy and fear, confidence, hope and disappointment.”
Joy, fear, confidence, hope, and disappointment are all interven¬
ing media, all shells. As long as you stick to them and they to
you, you shall not see God.

These are all significant and illuminating statements whereby
we can look into the core of Eckhart’s philosophical thinking.
He never wants us to leave the Godhead behind, he just wants
us to leave our shells and also asks of God to take off his shells
if he has any except those we have put on him. Both we and
God arc to be naked if there is to be a unification or identity
of any sort between the two. To be naked means to be empty,
for the two, God and creatures, can join hands only when
both stand in the field of Absolute Emptiness ( sunyatd ),
where there is neither light nor shadow.

Let us consider other passages from Eckhart for our own
further edification on the subject. The following arc from the
sermon with the title, “Distinctions Arc Lost in God”: 14

Man’s last and highest parting occurs when, for God’s sake,
he takes leave of God. St. Paul 11 took leave of God for God’s
sake and gave up all that he might get from God, as well as all
he might give—together with every idea of God. In parting with
these, he parted with God for God’s sake and yet God remained

14 Ibid., pp. 203 el teg.

> 8 Eckhart quotes St. Paul as sayinft: "I could wish to be cut off
eternally from God for my friends’ sake and for God’s sake.” This I
understand corresponds to the King James version, Romans, 9:3, “But
I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my
kinsmen according to the flesh.” I do not know how this discrepancy
takes place between the two quotations as I have no Greek texts with
me. Eckhart bases his argument on his Latin text, I believe.

l>

90 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

to him as God is in his own nature—not as he is conceived by
anyone to be—nor yet as something yet to be achieved—but
more as an is-ness (isticheit), as God really is. Then he neither
gave to God nor received anything from him, for he and God
were a unit, that is, pure unity.

Statements like this must have struck Christians of his days as
most extraordinary, even as blasphemous, and probably they
may still affect present-day Christians in the same way. But
from the Buddhist point of view they would not sound in any
way strange or singular or astounding. They are rather a
routine expression of Buddhist thought. Eckhart however does
not stop here, he goes on:

God gives to all things alike and as they proceed from God
they are alike. ... A flea, to the extent that it is in God, ranks
above the highest angel in his own right. Thus in God all things
arc equal and are God himself. ... In this likeness or identity
God takes such delight that he pours his whole nature and being
into it. His pleasure is as great, to take a simile, as that of a horse,
let loose to run over a green heath where the ground is level and
smooth, to gallop as a horse will, as fast as he can over the
greensward—for this is a horse’s pleasure and expresses his
nature. It is so with God. It is his pleasure and rapture to dis¬
cover identity, because he can always put his whole nature into
it—for he is this identity itself.

Is this not a remarkable utterance of spiritual intuition on
the part of the author? Here, we see that God, instead of be¬
ing left behind the “little point,” is right out on the green¬
sward with “his whole nature and being” in full display. He
keeps nothing in reserve. He gallops like a horse, he sings like
a bird, he blooms like the flower, he even dances like a young
girl. Living among the conventionally minded tradition-bound

“a little point” and satori 91

medieval Christians, Eckhart must have felt somewhat con¬
strained in his expression and did not go so far as the Zen
master would. Otherwise, Eckhart might have had “the
wooden horse neigh and the stone man dance,” w’ith the same
facility as the Zen master.

In one sense, this “little point” may be considered as corre¬
sponding to the Buddhist idea of ichi-nen (ekacitlaksana or
ekaksana in Sanskrit and i-nicn in Chinese). Eckhart’s “little
point,” if I understand it correctly, marks the turning point
in the suchncss of the Godhead. As long as the Godhead re¬
mains in its suchncss, that is, in its naked essence, it is Empti¬
ness itself, no sound comes from it, no odor issues from it,
it is “above grace, above intelligence, above all desire,” 10 it is
altogether unapproachable, unattainable, as Buddhist philoso¬
phers would say. But because of this “little point” left by it,
it comes in contact with creatures by making “the soul turn
back to itself and find itself and know itself to be a creature.”
The time when the soul becomes conscious of its creaturelincss
is the time also when God becomes aware of his contact with
creatures. Or we can say that this is creation. In Sermon 28
we have:

Back in the Womb 17 from which I came, I had no God and
merely was, myself. I did not will or desire anything, for I was
pure being, a knower of myself by divine truth. The I wanted
myself and nothing else. And what I wanted I was, and what I
was I wanted, and thus I existed untrammelled by God or any¬
thing else. But when I parted from my free will and received my

18 Ibid., p. 231.

1T The original German is "in miner ersten ursache." The translator
haj substituted this term. I do not know whether this is a happy transla¬
tion or not.

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

92

created being then I had a God. For before there were creatures,
God was not God, but rather he was what he was. When crea¬
tures came to be and took on creaturcly being, then God was no
longer God as he is in himself, but God as he is with creatures. 1 *

The Godhead must become God in order to make itself re¬
lated to creatures. The Biblical God as the creator of the world
is no longer God as he was. He created himself as he is, by
creating the world. But even this God is not to be conceived
in terms of time. The chronological God is the creation of a
relative mind and as such we can say that he is far removed
from the Godhead. He is just one of the creatures like our¬
selves. Eckhart says: “If a flea could have the intelligence by
which to search the eternal abyss of divine being, out of which
it came, we should say that God together with all that God is
could not give fulfillment or satisfaction to the flea!” 19 A
chronological God has to have the intelligence of the flea if
he wants to delve into the very being of the flea. The rising
of this intelligence in the soul, to use Eckhartian terminology,
is the positing of the “little point.”

*• Blakney, p. 228.

>• Ibid ., p. 229.

Living in the Light of Eternity

i

ETERNITY is, as a philosopher defines it, “an infinite extent
of time, in which every event is future at one time, present at
another, past at another.” x

This is an interesting definition no doubt, but what is “in¬
finity”? “No beginning and no end?” What is time that has no
beginning and no end? Time cannot be defined without eter¬
nity nor eternity without time? Is eternity time going on for¬
ever in two directions, past-ward and future-ward? Is time
eternity chopped to pieces or numbers?

Let us see whether a symbolic representation of eternity is
more amenable to our understanding or imagination. What
would a poet, for instance, say about it?

I saw Eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,

All calm, as it was bright.

And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres,

1 The Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Dagobert D. Runes (New
York: Philosophical Library), p. 97.

94

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled . 2

Henry Vaughan’s lines, as Bertrand Russell points out , 3 are
evidently suggested by Plato’s Timaeus in which Plato states:

Now the nature of the ideal being was everlasting, but to
bestow this attribute in its fulness upon a creature was impos¬
sible. Wherefore he [God] resolved to have a moving image of
eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this
image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity
itself rests in unity; and this image we call time. For there were
no days and nights and months and years before the heaven was
created, but when he constructed the heaven he created them
also . 4

Further, Plato goes on to say that the heaven and time are
so closely knit together that if one should dissolve the other
might also be dissolved:

Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same in¬
stant in order that, having been created together, if ever there
was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together.
It was framed after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it
might remember this as far as was possible; for the pattern exists
from eternity, and the created heaven has been, and is, and will
be, in all time.

The heaven is eternity; and ‘‘the sun and moon and the
five stars” are “the forms of time, which imitate eternity and

* Henry Vaughan, "The World.”

> History of Western Philosophy, p. 144.

* Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett (London: Oxford Uni¬
versity Press), Vol. Ill, p. 456. Published in the United Statcj by Random
House.

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY 95

revolve according to a law of number,” and the moving
images of the eternal essence which alone “is” and not sub¬
ject to becoming. What we see with our sense is not the heaven
itself, the original eternal being itself, which is only in God’s
mind. If we wish, therefore, “to live in the light of eternity”
we must get into God’s mind. “Is this possible?” one may ask.
But the question is not the possibility of achieving this end,
but its necessity; for otherwise we cannot go on living even
this life of ours though bound in time and measurable in days
and nights, in months and years. What is necessary, then,
must be possible. When the Eternal negated itself to manifest
itself in “the forms of time,” it assuredly did not leave the
forms helpless all by themselves; it must have entered into
them though negated. When the Eternal negated itself into
the moving, changing, sensible forms of time, it hid itself in
them. When we pick them up, we must see “the shoots of
everlastingncss” in them. “Was” and “will be” must be in
“is.” What is finite must be carrying in it, with it, everything
belonging to infinity. We who arc becoming in time, there¬
fore, must be able to sec that which eternally “is.” This is
seeing the world as God sees it, as Spinoza says, "sub specie
aeternitatis.”

Eternity may be regarded as a negation as far as human
finitude is concerned, but inasmuch as this finitude is always
changing, becoming, that is, negating itself, what is really
negative is the world itself and not the eternal. The eternal
must be an absolute affirmation which our limited human un¬
derstanding defines in negative terms. We must see the world
in this affirmation, which is God’s way of seeing the world,
seeing everything as part of the whole. “Living in the light of
eternity” cannot be anything else.

96 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

B. Jowett, translator of Plato, writes in his introduction to
Timaeus:

Not only Buddhism, but Greek as well as Christian philosophy,
show that it is quite possible that the human mind should retain
an enthusiasm for mere negations. . . . Eternity or the eternal
is not merely the unlimited in time but the truest of all Being,
the most real of all realities, the most certain of all knowledge,
which we nevertheless only see through a glass darkly . 8

The enthusiasm Jowett here refers to is not “for mere nega¬
tions” or for things which arc “seen only through a glass
darkly”; it cannot come out of the human side of finitude; it
must issue from eternity itself, which is in the finitude, indeed,
and which makes the finitude what it is. What appears to be
a mere negation from the logical point of view is really the
is-ness of things. As long as we cannot transcend the mere
logicality of our thinking, there will be no enthusiasm of any
kind whatever in any of us. What stirs us up to the very core
of our being must come from the great fact of affirmation and
not from negation.

ii

Buddhism is generally considered ncgativistic by Western
scholars. There is something in it which tends to justify this
view, as wc observe in Nagarjuna’s doctrine of “Eight No’s”:

There is no birth,

Nor is there death;

There is no beginning,

Nor is there any ending;

Nothing is identical with itself.

Nor is there any diversification;

• Ibid., p. 398 .

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY

97

Nothing comes into existence,

Nor does anything go out of existence.*

What he aims at by negating everything that can be pred¬
icated of the Dharma (Ultimate Reality) is to bring out
thereby what he terms the Middle Way. The Middle Way is
not sheer nothingness, it is a something that remains after
every possible negation. Its other name is the Unattainable,
and the Prajnd-pdramita-sutra teach the doctrine of the Un¬
attainable. I will try to illustrate what it means in order to
clarify the deeper implications of this contradictory statement.
I shall repeat the story found in Chapter II.

There was once in the Tang dynasty in the history of
China, a great scholar thoroughly versed in this doctrine. His
name was Tokusan (790-865, Tc-shan in Chinese). He was
not at all satisfied with the Zen form of Buddhist teaching
which was rapidly gaining power, especially in the south of
China. Wishing to refute it he came out of Szu-ch’uan in the
southwestern part of China.

His objective was to visit a great Zen monastery in the dis¬
trict of Li-yang. When he approached it he thought of refresh¬
ing himself with a cup of tea. He entered a teahouse by the
roadside and ordered some refreshments. Seeing a bundle on
his back, the old lady who happened to be the teahouse keeper
asked what it was.

Tokusan said, “This is Shoryo’s [Ch’ing-lung’s] great com¬
mentary on the Diamond Sutra [a portion of the great Prajiid-
pdramitd-s utrd ]."

“I have a question and if you answer it I shall be glad to
serve you the refreshments free of charge. Otherwise, you will
have to go elsewhere.”

0 The Madhyamika-iastra, "Treatise on the Middle Way."

g8 MYSTICISM: CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST

"What is your question?” the monk asked.

“According to the Diamond Sutra, ‘The past mind is un¬
attainable, the future mind is unattainable, and the present
mind is unattainable.’ If so, what is the mind which you wish
to punctuate?”

An explanation is needed here. In Chinese, “refreshments,”
t'ien-hsin, literally means “punctuating the mind.” I do not
know how the term originated. The teahouse keeper making
use of “the mind” associated with “refreshments” quoted the
Sutra in which the mind in terms of time is said to be “un¬
attainable” in any form, cither past, present, or future. If this
is the case, the monk cannot have any “mind” which he wishes
to “punctuate.” Hence her question.

Tokusan was nonplused, because he was never prepared to
encounter such questions while studying the Sutra along the
conventional line of conceptual interpretation. He could not
answer the question and was obliged to go without his tea.
Those who do not know’ how to transcend time will naturally
find it difficult to attain Nirvana which is eternity.

The unattainability of Nirvana comes from seeking it on
the other shore of becoming as if it were something beyond
time or birth-and-dcath ( samsdra ). Nirvana is samsdra and
samsdra is Nirvana. Therefore, eternity, Nirvana, is to be
grasped where time, samsdra, moves on. The refreshments
cannot be taken outside time. The taking is time. The taking
is something attainable, and yet it goes on in something un¬
attainable. For without this something unattainable all that
is attainable will cease to be attainable. This paradoxicality
marks life.

Time is elusive, that is, unattainable. If we try to take hold
of it by looking at it from the outside, then we cannot even

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY 99

have ordinary refreshments. When time is caught objectively
in a serialism of past, present, and future, it is like trying to
catch one’s own shadow. This is negating eternity constantly.
The unattainable must be grasped from the inside. One has
to live in it and with it. While moving and changing, one
must become the moving and changing. Emerson in “Brahma”
sings of the eternal as “one” in the changing and moving
forms of time:

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;

I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

Where "the doubter and the doubt” arc one, there is Brahma
as “the pattern of the eternal nature,” which is God himself.
When “the doubter and the doubt” arc separated and placed
in the serialism of time, the dichotomy cuts into every moment
of life darkening forever the light of eternity.

“Living in the light of eternity” is to get into the oneness
and allncss of things and to live with it. This is what the
Japanese call “seeing things sono-mama” 7 in their suchness,
which in William Blake’s terms is to “hold infinity in the palm
of your hand, and eternity is an hour.”

To sec things as God secs them, according to Spinoza, is to
see them under the aspect of eternity. All human evaluation
is, however, conditioned by time and relativity. It is ordi¬
narily difficult for us humans “to sec a world in a grain of
sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.” To our senses, a grain
of sand is not the whole world, nor is a wild flower in a corner
of the field a heaven. We live in a world of discrimination and

T In the “as-it-is-ness” of things.

ioo mysticism: Christian and buddhist

our enthusiasm rises from the consideration of particulars. We
fail to see them “evenly” or “uniformly” as Meister Eckhart
tells us to do, which is also Spinoza’s way, Blake’s way, and
other wise men’s way, East and West. Tennyson must have
been in a similar frame of consciousness when he plucked a
wild flower out of the crannied wall and held it in his hand
and contemplated it.*

m

However difficult this way of looking at the world is, the
strange thing to most of us, or rather the wonderful thing, is
that once in a while we transcend the temporal and relativistic
point of view. It is then that we realize that life is worth
living, and that death is not the end of all our strivings, and
furthermore that what Buddhists call “thirst” ( trisna) is more
deeply rooted than we imagine, as it grows straight out of the
root of karuna *

Let me cite a Japanese Haiku poet of the eighteenth cen¬
tury, Basho. One of his seventeen-syllable poems reads:

When closely inspected,

One notices a nazuna in bloom
Under the hedge.

The nazuna is a small flowering wild plant. Even when
flowering it is hardly noticeable, having no special beauty.
But when the time comes, it blooms, fulfilling all that is
needed of a living being as ordered at the beginning of crea¬
tion. It comes directly from God as docs any other form of
being. There is nothing mean about it. Its humble glory sur¬
passes all human artificiality. But ordinarily we pass by it and

* "Flower in the Crannied Wall"

® "Compassion.” One may say it is the Buddhist equivalent of love.

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY 101

pay not the slightest attention. Basho at the time must have
been strangely impressed by it blooming under a thickly grow¬
ing hedge, modestly lifting its tender head hardly discernible
from the rest. The poet does not at all express his emotions.
He makes no allusions whatever to “God and man,” nor does
he express his desire to understand “What you are root, and
all, and all in all.” He simply looks at the nazuna so insig¬
nificant and yet so full of heavenly splendor and goes on
absorbed in the contemplation of “the mystery of being,”
standing in the midst of the light of eternity.

At this point it is important to note the difference between
East and West. When Tennyson noticed the flower in a
crannied wall he “plucked” it and held it in his hand and
went on reflecting about it, pursuing his abstract thought
about God and man, about the totality of things and the un-
fathomability of life. This is characteristic of Western man.

His mind works analytically. The direction of his thinking
is toward the externality or objectivity of things. Instead of
leaving the flower as it is blooming in the cranny, Tennyson
must pluck it out and hold it in his hand. If he were scien¬
tifically minded, he would surely bring it to the laboratory,
dissect it, and look at it under the microscope; or he would
dissolve it in a variety of chemical solutions and examine them
in the tubes, perhaps over a burning fire. He would go
through all these processes with anything, mineral or vege¬
table, animal or human. He would treat the human body,
dead or alive, with the same innocence or indifference as he
does a piece of stone. This is also a kind of seeing the world
in the aspect of eternity or rather in the aspect of perfect
“evenness.”

When the scientist finishes (though the “when” of this is

102 mysticism: Christian and buddiiist

unpredictable) his examination, experimentation, and obser¬
vation, he will indulge in all forms of abstract thinking;
evolution, heredity, genetics, cosmogeny. If he is still more
abstract-minded, he may extend his speculative mood to a
metaphysical interpretation of existence. Tennyson docs not
go so far as this. He is a poet who deals with concrete images.

Compare all this with Basho and we sec how differently
the Oriental poet handles his experience. Above all, he docs
not “pluck” the flower, he docs not mutilate it, he leaves it
where he has found it. He docs not detach it from the totality
of its surroundings, he contemplates it in its sono-mama state,
not only in itself but in the situation as it finds itself—the
situation in its broadest and deepest possible scasc. Another
Japanese poet refers to the wild flowers:

All these wild flowers of the fields—

Should I dare touch them?

I offer them as they are
To all the Buddhas in the
Three thousand chiliocosms!

Here is the feeling of reverence, of mystery, of wonderment,
which is highly religious. But all this is not expressly given
articulation. Basho simply refers first to his “close inspection”
which is not necessarily aroused by any purposeful direction
of his intention to find something among the bushes; he simply
looks casually around and is greeted unexpectedly by the
modestly blooming plant which ordinarily escapes one's de¬
tection. He bends down and “closely” inspects it to be assured
that it is a nazuna. He is deeply touched by its unadorned
simplicity, yet partaking in the glory of its unknown source.
He docs not say a word about his inner feeling, every syllabic

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY IO3

is objective except the last two syllables, " kana” 10 “Kana” is
untranslatable into English, perhaps except by an exclama¬
tion mark, which is the only sign betraying the poet’s subjec¬
tivity. Of course, a Haiku being no more than a poem of
seventeen syllables cannot express everything that went on in
Basho’s mind at the time. But this very fact of the Haiku’s
being so extremely epigrammatic and sparing of words gives
every syllable used an intensity of unexpressed inner feeling of
the poet, though much is also left to the reader to discover
what is hidden between the syllables. The poet alludes to a few
significant points of reference in his seventeen-syllable lines
leaving the inner connection between those points to be filled
by the sympathetically or rather cmpathetically vibrating
imagination of the reader.

IV

Western psychologists talk about the theory of empathy or
transference of feeling or participation, but I am rather in¬
clined to propound the doctrine of identity. Transference or
participation is based upon the dualistic interpretation of real¬
ity whereas the identity goes more fundamentally into the root
of existence where no dichotomy in any sense has yet taken
place. From this point of view, participation becomes easier
to understand and may be more reasonable or logical. For no
participation is possible where there is no underlying sense of
identity. When difference is spoken of, this presupposes one¬
ness. The idea of two is based on that of one. Two will never
be understood without one. To visualize this, read the follow¬
ing from Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations:

10 Yoku mirtba [When] carefully seen,

Nazuna hana saku Nazuna in bloom,

Kakint kana! The hedge!

104 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in
your veins, till you arc clothed with the heavens, and crowned
witli the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the
whole world, and more than so, because men arc in it who arc
every one sole heirs as well as you."

Or this:

Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning
you awake in Heaven; sec yourself in your Father's Palace; and
look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as Celestial Joys; hav¬
ing such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the
Angels. 1 *

Such feelings as these can never be comprehended so long as
the sense of opposites is dominating your consciousness. The
idea of participation or empathy is an intellectual interpreta¬
tion of the primary experience, while as far as the experience
itself is concerned, there is no room for any sort of dichotomy.
The intellect, however, obtrudes itself and breaks up the ex¬
perience in order to make it amenable to intellectual treat¬
ment, which means a discrimination or bifurcation. The
original feeling of identity is then lost and intellect is allowed
to have its characteristic way of breaking up reality into pieces.
Participation or empathy is the result of intcllcctualization.
The philosopher who has no original experience is apt to in¬
dulge in it.

According to John Hayward, who wrote an introduction to
the 1950 edition of Thomas Traherne s Centuries of Medita¬
tions, Traherne is "a theosopher or visionary whose powerful
imagination enabled him to see through the veil of appear-

11 Ctnturies of Meditations, Thomas Traherne, 1636-1674 (London:
P. J.& A.E. Dobell), p. 19.

>* Ibid.

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY IO5

ances and rediscover the world in its original state of in¬
nocence.” This is to revisit the Garden of Eden, to regain
Paradise, where the tree of knowledge has not yet begun to
bear fruit. The Wordsworthian “Intimations” are no more
than our longings for eternity that was left behind. It is our
eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge which has resulted
in our constant habit of intellectualizing. But we have never
forgotten, mythologically speaking, the original abode of inno¬
cence; that is to say, even when wc arc given over to intel¬
lection and to the abstract way of thinking, we arc always
conscious, however dimly, of something left behind and not
appearing on the chart of well-schematized analysis. This
“something” is no other than the primary experience of reality
in its suchncss or is-ncss, or in its sono-mama state of existence.
“Innocence” is a Biblical term and corresponds ontologically
to "being sono-mama ” as the term is used in Buddhism.

Let me quote further from Traherne whose eternity-pierc¬
ing eye seems to survey the bcginninglcss past as well as the
endless future. His book of “meditations” is filled with won¬
derful insights born of a profound religious experience which
is that of one who has discovered his primal innocence.

Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness?
Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had from the womb, and
that divine light wherewith I was born are the best unto this
day, wherein I can see the Universe. . . .

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious
apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.

My very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one brought
into the Estate of Innocence. All things were spotless and pure
and glorious: yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious.

I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints or laws. I

io6 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

dreamed not of poverties, contentions or vices. All tears and
quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. Everything was at rest,
free and immortal, I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents
or exaction, either tribute or bread. . . .

All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. . . .

All things abided eternally as they were in their proper places.
Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something
infinite behind everything appeared: which talked with my ex¬
pectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in
Eden, or to be built in Heaven. . . .

v

Compared with these passages, how prosaic and emotionally
indifferent Zen is! When it sees a mountain it declares it to
be a mountain; when it comes to a river, it just tells us it is a
river. When Chokei (Chang-ching) after twenty hard years
of study happened to lift the curtain and saw the outside
world, he lost all his previous understanding of Zen and simply
made this announcement:

How mistaken I was! How mistaken I was!

Raise the screen and see the world!

If anybody asks me what philosophy I understand,

I’ll straightway give him a blow across his mouth
with my hossu.

Chokei docs not say what he saw when the screen was lifted
up. He simply resents any question being asked about it. He
even goes to the length of keeping the questioner’s mouth
tightly closed. He knows that if one even tried to utter a word
and say “this” or “that,” the very designation misses the mark.
It is like another master’s bringing out before the entire con¬
gregation a monk who asked him who Buddha was. The mas-

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY 107

ter then made this remark, “Where docs this monk want to
find Buddha? Is this not a silly question?” Indeed, we are all
apt to forget that every one of us is Buddha himself. In the
Christian way of saying, this means that we are all made in
the likeness of God or, in Eckhart’s words, that “God’s is-ness
is my is-ness and neither more nor less.” ,s
It may not be altogether unprofitable in this connection to
give another Zen “ease” where God’s is-ness is made perceiv¬
able in the world of particulars as well as in the world of
absolute oneness. To us the ease illustrates the Eckhartian
knowledge “that I know God as He knows me, neither more
nor less but always the same.” This is knowing things as they
arc, loving them in their sono-mama state, or “loving justice
for its own sake,” 14 that is to say, “loving God without any
reason for loving.” Zen may look so remote and aloof from
human affairs that between it and Eckhart some may be per¬
suaded to see nothing of close relationship as I am trying to
show here. But in reality Eckhart uses in most cases psycho¬
logical and pcrsonalistic terms whereas Zen is steeped in meta¬
physics and in transcendentalism. But wherever the identity of
God and man is recognized the Zen statements as they are
given below will be intelligible enough.

Hakuin (1685-1768), a great Japanese Zen master of the
Tokugawa era, quotes in his famous book known as Kwai-an-

11 Blakney, p. 180.

u Eckhart's idea of “justice" may be gleaned from the following pas¬
sages from his “Sermon" 18 (Blakney, pp. 178-82):

"He is just who gives to each what belongs to him.”

"They are just who take everything from God evenly, just as it comes,
great and small, desirable and undesirable, one thing like another, all
the same, and neither more nor less."

“The just live eternally with God, on a par with God, neither deeper
nor higher."

"God and I: we arc one. By knowing God I take him to myself. By
loving God I penetrate him."

io8 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
koku Go (fas. 5) a story of Shun Rofu’s interview with a well-
seasoned lay disciple of Zen. Shun (of the Sung dynasty) was
still a young man when this interview took place. It was the
custom of this lay disciple .to ask a question of a new monk-
visitor who wanted to enjoy the hospitality of the devoted Zen
Buddhist, and the following once took place between him and
a new caller:

Q. “How about the ancient mirror which has gone through
a process of thorough polishing?”

A. "Heaven and earth are illuminated.”

Q. “How about before the polishing?”

A. “As dark as black lacquer.”

The layman Buddhist was sorry to dismiss the monk as not
fully deserving his hospitality.

The monk now returned to his old master and asked:

Q. “How about the ancient mirror not yet polished?”

A. “Han-yang is not very far from here.”

Q. “How about after the polish?”

A. “The Isle of Parrot [Ying-wu] lies before the Pavilion
of Yellow Stork [Huang-huo].”

This is said to have at once opened the monk’s eye to the
meaning of the ancient mirror, which was the subject of dis¬
cussion between him and Shun. “The mirror” in its is-ness
knows no polishing. It is the same old mirror whether or not
it goes through any form of polishing. “Justice is even,” says
Eckhart. For “the just have no will at all: whatever God
wants, it is all one to them.”

Now Hakuin introduces the following mondo : 14

A monk asked Ho-un of Rosozan, a disciple of Nangaku
Yejo (died 744), “How do we speak and not speak?” This is

"Queilion and answer."

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY IO9

the same as asking: How do we transcend the law of contra¬
diction? When the fundamental principle of thought is with¬
held, there will be no thinking of God as Eckhart tells us,
“God [who] is in his own creature—not as he is conceived by
anyone to be—nor yet as something yet to be achieved—but
more as an ‘is-ncss,’ as God really is.” 10 What kind of God
can this be? Evidently, God transcends all our thought. If so,
how have we ever come to conceive of God? To say God is
"this” or “that” is to deny God, according to Eckhart. He is
above all predicates, either positive or negative. The monk’s
question here ultimately brings us to the same form of quandary.

Ho-un of Rosozan, instead of directly answering the monk,
retorted, “Where is your mouth?”

The monk answered, “I have no mouth.” Poor monk! He
was aggressive enough in his first questioning, for he definitely
demanded to get an answer to the puzzle: “How could reality
be at once an affirmation and a negation?” But when Ho-un
counterquestioned him, “Where is your mouth?” all that the
monk could say was, “I have no mouth.” Ho-un was an old
hand. Detecting at once where the monk was, that is, seeing
that the monk was still unable to transcend the dichotomy,
Ho*un pursued with “How do you cat your rice?”

The monk had no response. (The point is whether he had
a real understanding of the whole situation.)

Later Tozan, another master, hearing of this mondo, gave
his own answer: “He feels no hunger and has no need for
rice.”

“One who feels no hunger” is “the ancient mirror” that
needs no polishing, is he who “speaks and yet speaks not.” He
is “justice” itself, the justice is the suchness of things. To be

18 Blalcney, p. 204.

IIO

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

“just” means to be sono-mama, to follow the path of "every¬
day consciousness,” “to cat when hungry and to rest when
tired.” In this spirit I interpret Eckhart’s passage: "If I were
perpetually doing God's will, then I would be a virgin in
reality, as exempt from idea-handicaps as I was before I was
born.” ,T "Virginity” consists in not being burdened with any
forms of intellection, in responding with "Yes, yes” when I
am addressed by name. I meet a friend in the street, he says,
"Good morning,” and I respond, "Good morning.” This will
again correspond to the Christian way of thinking: "If God
told an angel to go to a tree and pick off the caterpillar, the
angel would be glad to do it and it would be bliss to him
because it is God’s will.” 18

A monk asked a Zen master, “I note an ancient wise man
saying: ‘I raise the screen and face the broad daylight; I
move the chair and am greeted by the blue mountain.’ What
is meant by ‘I raise the screen and face the broad daylight’?”

The master said, "Please pass me the pitcher there."

"What is meant by ‘I move the chair and am greeted by
the blue mountains’?”

"Please put the pitcher back where it was found.” This was
the answer given by the master.

AU these Zen mondo may sound nonsensical and the reader
may come to the conclusion that when the subject is "living
in the light of eternity” they arc altogether irrelevant and have
no place in a volume like this. It is quite a natural criticism
from the point of view of an ordinary man of the world. But
let us listen to what Eckhart, one of the greatest mystics in the

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY

11 I

Christian world, states about the “now-moment” which is no
other than eternity itself:

The now-moment in which God made the first man, and the
now-moment in which the last man will disappear, and the now-
moment in which I am speaking are all one in God, in whom
there is only one now. 1 *

I have been reading all day, confined to my room, and feel
tired. I raise the screen and face the broad daylight. I move
the chair on the veranda and look at the blue mountains. I
draw a long breath, fill my lungs with fresh air and feel en¬
tirely refreshed. I make tea and drink a cup or two of it. Who
would say that I am not living in the light of eternity? We
must, however, remember that all these are events of one’s
inner life as it comes in touch with eternity or as it is awakened
to the meaning of “the now-moment” which is eternity, and
further that things or events making up one’s outer life arc no
problems here.

VI

I quote again from Eckhart’s Sermon 18:

In eternity, the Father begets the Son in his own likeness. "The
Word was with God and the Word was God.” Like God, it had
his nature. Furthermore, I say that God has begotten him in my
soul. Not only is the soul like him and he like it, but he is in it,
for the Father begets his Son in the soul exactly as he does in
eternity and not otherwise. He must do so whether he will or
not. The Father ceaselessly begets his Son and, what is more, he
begets me not only as his Son but as himself and himself as my¬
self, begetting me in his own nature, his own being. At that
inmost Source, I spring from the Holy Spirit and there is one

>» Ibid., p. 209.

1 12 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

life, one being, one action. All God's works are one and therefore
He begets me as he does his Son and without distinction. 20

Is this not a strong bold saying? But there is no denying its
absolute truth. Yet we must not forget that the truth of Eck-
hart’s sermon comes from setting ourselves in the light of eter¬
nity. As long as we are creatures in time and seeking our own
and not God’s will, we shall never find God in ourselves. When
references arc made to Christian symbolism such as “God,”
“Father,” “Son,” “Holy Spirit,” “begetting,” and “likeness,”
the reader may wonder in what sense Buddhists are using
these terms. But the truth is that symbols arc after all symbols
and when this inner signification is grasped they can be util¬
ized in any way one may choose. First, we must see into the
meaning and discard all the historical or existential encum¬
brances attached to the symbols and then we all, Christians as
well as Buddhists, will be able to penetrate the veil.

The Biblical God is said to have given his name to Moses
. on Mount Sinai as "I am that I am.” This is a most profound
utterance, for all our religious or spiritual or metaphysical ex¬
periences start from it. This is the same as Christ’s saying, “I
am,” that is, he is eternity itself, while Abraham is in time,
therefore, he “was” and not “is.” Those who live in the light
of eternity always arc and arc never subjected to the becom¬
ing of “was” and “will be.”

Eternity is the absolute present and the absolute present is
living a sono-mama life, where life asserts itself in all its full¬
ness.

30 Ibid., p. 181.

Appendices

V.

Transmigration

DOES Buddhism teach transmigration? If it does, how does
it work? Docs the soul really transmigrate?

Such questions are frequently asked, and I will try briefly
to answer them here.

i

The idea of transmigration is this: After death, the soul
migrates from one body to another, celestial, human, animal,
or vegetative.

In Buddhism, as it is popularly understood, what regulates
transmigration is ethical retribution. Those who behave prop¬
erly go to heaven, or to heavens, as there are many heavens
according to Buddhist cosmology. Some may be reborn among
their own races. Those, however, who have not conducted
themselves according to moral precepts will be consigned after
death to the underground worlds called Naraka.

There are some destined to be reborn as a dog or a cat or
a hog or a cow or some other animal, according to deeds
which can be characterized as pre-eminently in correspond¬
ence with those natures generally ascribed to those particular
animals. For instance, the hog is popularly thought to be

i*5

ix6 ' mysticism: Christian and buddhist

greedy and filthy. Thus those of us who are especially inclined
to be that way will be hogs in their next lives. Others who are
rather smart or cunning or somewhat mischievous may be
bom as rats or monkeys or foxes. This reminds us of Sweden¬
borg’s doctrine of correspondence, according to which things
on earth have corresponding things in heaven or hell.

Sometimes we are said to be born as plants or even rocks.

The interesting thing about this idea of transmigration as
sometimes told by Buddhists is that we do not stay in heaven
or hell forever. When our karma is exhausted, we come out of
hell or come down from heaven. Even when we turn into cats
or dogs, we do not repeat this kind of life all the time. We
may be reborn as human beings again if we do something
good while living as a lower animal, though it is highly doubt¬
ful that, for instance, the cat can be taught not to steal fish
from the neighbors—which is what she does quite frequently
in Japan—however well she may be fed at home.

But so far nobody has advanced the method of calculating
mathematically the strength of karma according to the char¬
acter of each deed. Therefore, we can never tell how long our
life in heaven or hell will be. In any case, we know this much:
there is a time when we have to leave heaven or hell.

Buddhists are more concerned—which is natural—with
Naraka (hells) than heavens. After death we generally go to
Yama, who rules the spirits of the dead. He is known as
Emma-sama in Japanese. He has a bright mirror before him.
When we appear before him, we see ourselves reflected in it.
It illuminates our entire being, and we cannot hide anything
from it. Good and bad, all is reflected in it as it is. Emma-
sama looks at it and knows at once what kind of person each
of us was while living in the world. Besides this, he has a book

TRAN SMIGRATION

XI 7

before him in which everything we did is minutely recorded.
We are therefore before the Lord of Death exactly what we
were, and there is no deceiving him. His judgment goes
straight to the core of our personality. It never errs. His pene¬
trating eye reads not only our consciousness but also our un¬
conscious. He is naturally legalistic, but he is not devoid
of kindheartedness, for he is always ready to discover in the
unconscious something which may help the criminal to save
himself.

ii

The idea of transmigration has a certain appeal to the
imaginative mind if one is not too critical or scientific—the
idea that each motive, consciously conceived or unconsciously
prompted, has its ethical value and is punishable or reward-
able accordingly, and that the Lord of Death ruling the un¬
derworld makes no mistake in assigning us to places where we
each belong. His mirror of judgment and his records never err
in this respect. These ideas correspond to our sense of justice
and compensation. Instead of all sinners being summarily
consigned to everlasting fire when the Day of Judgment
comes, it is certainly more in accord with common sense and
justice that each sin, judiciously weighed and evaluated, be
given its particular due. This evaluation and consignment,
when demonstrated in the doctrine of transmigration, takes on
a poetic coloring.

Suppose I did something wrong or something not so very
bad and were made to be reborn as a cat. I would live in this
animal form for a while, perhaps eight or ten years, for the
cat docs not live very long. My sin is expiated, for probably I
behaved properly as a cat from the human point of view. As

ii8 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

a reward, I am born again as a human being. Now, if I re¬
membered this experience as a cat, would it not be highly
interesting for me as a former cat to observe all that the
mother cat now in my house does, playing with her kittens,
sometimes bringing a lizard and even a little snake from the
yard for the little ones to play with?

When not only the cat but all the other animals, and also
plants and rocks, are looked upon from this point of view, that
is, as possible forms of our reincarnation in the future as well
as in the past, would not our interest in all those objects exist¬
ing about us take quite a new turn and perhaps become a
source of spiritual inspiration in some way?

For one thing, those forms surrounding us cease to be things
altogether foreign to us. They are not strangers; they arc not
something hostile. On the contrary, they share our nature. We
are ready to transform ourselves into their forms of existence,
and they too can someday take human form when they are so
conditioned. There is a mutual interest between us and them.
There is a bond of sympathy and mutual understanding be¬
tween human beings and the rest of the world.

Besides these considerations, the doctrine of transmigration
affords us the chance of pilgrimaging throughout the whole
universe, from the thirty-three heavens to the nineteen hells,
including the other realms such as the liryagyona (animal),
preta (hungry ghost), and asura (fighting devils). While it is
not at all pleasant to be fighting all the time, to be tortured
in various ways, or to be eternally hungry, it is in accord with
human nature to experience vicissitudes of existence and
thereby to learn to read the meaning of life.

Nobody likes to be in hell and tortured. But because of this
experience, we know how to appreciate heavenly pleasures

TRANSMIGRATION 11 9

and how to be sympathetic with our fellow beings who happen
to be in not so pleasant an environment.

ni

Transmigration pictures us traveling through an infinite
number of Kalpas as wc go on individually experiencing life
in its possible varieties. Evolution, however, delineates human
existence as a whole as having gone through all these stages.
This is the difference between science and religion: science
deals with abstractions, whereas religion is individualistic and
personal. So far, evolution has not taken account of ethical
implications. It has treated the subject from the point of view
of biology and psychology. In the rising development of the
human race, the scientists have not given much significance
to the ethical and spiritual factors; they have been primarily
concerned with the way man has made use of his intelligence
more than anything else in his so-called upward course of
development.

Transmigration reviews man’s existence entirely from the
point of view of ethics and religion; it is hardly concerned
with his intelligence. And this is the very point where trans¬
migration interests us. The idea may not have anything
deserving scientific investigation. But in spite of this, it per¬
petually attracts the attention of religious minded people.

IV

Theoretically speaking, the idea of incarnation must have
come first, then reincarnation, and finally transmigration.
Something took the flesh, God or the word or the devil or
the first principle or anything else, which had to express itself
in a tangible and visible form so that we can talk of it as

120 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
something. Being made of the senses and intellect, we in¬
dividualize, which means incarnation.

When incarnation is established, reincarnation is easy to
follow: and when reincarnation is morally evaluated, we have
transmigration. Transmigration then comes to be connected
with the idea of punishment and reward.

There is another implication of transmigration, which is
the idea of the moral perfectibility of human nature. Before
Buddha attained Buddhahood he went through many an in¬
carnation, and in each reincarnation he is said to have prac¬
ticed the six or ten virtues of pdramitd, whereby in his last
incarnation as a human being he became a perfect man, that

is, Buddha. _ , ... f

As long as we have the idea of an infinite possibility of

perfecting ourselves morally, we must find some way of carry¬
ing this idea through. Inasmuch as we cannot forever continue
our individual existence as such, there must be another way
of solving the problem, which is what we may call the eternally
progressive conception of transmigration.

v

Besides this interpretation of the transmigration idea in its
moral and punitive aspects, there is an enjoyable phase of it
when we make it a matter of experience during our lifetime.
When we scrutinize our daily experiences, we realize that we
have here everything we could experience by going through
an indefinitely long period of transmigration. Every shade of
feeling we have while on earth finds its counterpart some¬
where in the heavens or in the hells or in some intermediate
realms of the preta, or asura or tiryagyona. For instance, when
we arc angry, we arc with the asura; when we arc pleased, we

TRANSMIGRATION

121

arc transported into the heaven of joy, nirmanarataya; when
we are restless, we have turned into the monkey; when we can
imagine ourselves free from guilt, we bloom as the lotus or as
the morning glory in the early summer dawn, and so on. The
whole universe depicts itself in human consciousness. That is
to say, our daily life is an epitome of an indefinitely long
career of transmigration.

VI

As far as I can see, the doctrine of transmigration does not
seem to enjoy any scientific support. The first question we
encounter is, "What is it that transmigrates?” We may answer,
"It is the soul.” “What, then, is the soul?” The soul cannot
be conceived as an entity or an object like any other objects
we see about us. It cannot be anything tangible or visible. If
so, how does it manage to enter into a body? How does it get
out of one body when this body decomposes and pass into
another body? Where is this “other body” waiting for the
liberated soul to enter? The body without the soul is incon¬
ceivable; we cannot imagine a soulless body in existence some¬
where to receive the soul newly detached. If the soul can
maintain itself without embodying itself, why do we not find
bodylcss souls wandering somewhere? Can a soul subsist with¬
out a body?

If the doctrine of transmigration is to be tenable, we must
say that there is something that transmigrates; if there is some¬
thing, what is it? If we cannot affirm it as an entity, what can
it be? Can the questions enumerated above be satisfactorily
answered? There arc still other questions which must be an¬
swered before we can establish transmigration.

122

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

vn

We can think of the soul not as an entity but as a principle.
We can conceive of the soul as not entering into a body
already in existence and ready to receive the soul, but as creat¬
ing a body suitable for its own habitation. Instead of form or
structure determining function, we can take function as deter¬
mining form. In this case, the soul comes first and the body
is constructed by it. This is really the Buddhist conception of
transmigration.

Buddhist philosophy considers trisna or tanha, or “thirst,”
the first principle of making things come into existence. In the
beginning there is trisna. It wills to have a form in order to
express itself, which means to assert itself. In other words,
when it asserts itself it takes form. As trisna is inexhaustible,
the forms it takes are infinitely varied. Trisna wants to sec and
we have eyes; it wants to hear and we have cars; it wants to
jump and we have the deer, the rabbit, and other animals of
this order; it wants to fly and we have birds of all kinds; it
wants to swim and we have fish wherever there arc waters; it
wants to bloom and we have flowers; it wants to shine and
we have stars; it wants to have a realm of heavenly bodies
and wc have astronomy; and so on. Trisna is the creator of
the universe.

Being the creator, trisna is the principle of individuation. It
creates a world of infinite diversities. It will never exhaust
itself. We as its highest and richest expression can have an
insight into the nature of trisna and its working. When we
really see into ourselves, trisna will bare itself before itself in
us. As it is not an individualized object, self-inspection is the
only way to approach it and make it reveal all its secrets. And

TRANSMIGRATION 123

when wc know them, perhaps we may also understand what
transmigration really means.

When we see the lilies of the field and observe that they
arc more gloriously arrayed than Solomon in his day, is this
not because in our trisnd there is something participating in
the trisnd of the flower? Otherwise, wc could never appreciate
them. When we follow the fowls of the air and think of their
being utterly free from care or worry, is this not because the
pulse of our trisnd beats in unison with the trisnd of the fowls?
If this were not the case, how could wc ever come to the un¬
derstanding of those creatures? Even when Nature is regarded
as hostile, there must be something in it which calls out this
feeling in us—which is to say, Nature partakes of (human)
trisnd.

The atom may be considered nothing but a cluster of elec¬
trically charged particles and having nothing in common with
human trisnd. But does it not respond to the appliances con¬
trived by human minds and human hands? And is it not
because of this response that wc can read into the nature of
the atom and even devise a weapon most destructive to us
human beings? The atom certainly has its trisnd, and it is this
trisnd that enables man to express it in a mathematical formula.

VIII

When I was discussing this subject the other day, one of
the great thinkers now in America remarked, “Does this mean
that there are in our consciousness all these trisnd as its con¬
stituent elements?” This is perhaps the way most of our readers
would like to interpret my presentation of trisnd when I make
it the basis of mutual understanding, as it were, between our¬
selves and Nature generally. But I must say that that is not

124 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

the way I conceive trisnd. Trisnd lies in us not as one of the
factors constituting our consciousness, but it is our being itself.
It is I; it is you; it is the cat; it is the tree; it is the rock; it
is the snow; it is the atom.

IX

Some may like to compare trisnd with Schopenhauer’s Will
to live, but my idea of trinsa is deeper than his Will. For the
Will as he conceives it is already differentiated as the Will
striving to live against death, against destruction. The Will
implies a dualism. But trisnd remains still dormant, as it were,
as in the mind of God, for God has not yet moved to his work
of creation. This moving is trisnd. It is trisnd that moves. It
is trisnd that made God give out his fiat, “Let there be light.”
Trisnd is what lies at the back of Schopenhauer’s Will. Trisnd
is a more fundamental conception than the Will.

For Schopenhauer, the Will is blind; but trisnd is neither
blind nor not blind, for neither of them can yet be predicated
of trisnd. Trisnd is not yet a what. It can be called the pure
will. In early Buddhism, trisnd forms one of the links in the
chain of “Dependent Origination,” and it is demanded of us
to get rid of it in order that we may be freed from grief and
fear. But early Buddhists were not logical enough to push the
idea of trisnd far enough to its very source. Their effort to
deliver themselves from trisna’s so-called leading to grief, fear,
and so on, was also the working of trisnd itself. As long as we
are human beings, we can never do away with trisnd, or, as
they say, destroy it. The destruction of trisnd will surely mean
the annihilation of ourselves, leaving no one who will be the
enjoyer of the outcome. Trisnd is indeed the basis of all exist¬
ence. Trisnd is existence. Trisnd is even before existence.

TRANSMIGRATION

*25

Later Buddhists realized this truth and made trisna the
foundation of their new system of teaching with its doctrines
of the Bodhisattva, universal salvation, Amitabha’s “vow”
[pranidhana), the parindmana (“turning over of merit”), and
so on. These arc all the outgrowth of trisna. When a Zen
master was asked, “How could one get away with trisna?” he
answered, “What is the use of getting away with it?” He
further said, “Buddha is Buddha because of it,” or, “Buddha
is trisna In fact, the whole life of Sakyamuni illustrates this.

x

Coming back to the transmigration phase of the trisna doc¬
trine, I should like to assert again that this trisna as it ex¬
presses itself is essentially the same in any form it may take.
(We cannot think of it in any other way.) The human trisna
as we feel it inwardly must be that of the cat, or the dog, or
the crow, or the snake. When a cat runs after a rat, when a
snake devours a frog, when a dog jumps up furiously barking
at a squirrel in the tree, when a pig goes around groveling in
the mud, when the fish swims about contentedly in the pond,
when the waves rage angrily on a stormy ocean, do we not
feel here our own trisna expressing some of its infinitely
variable modes? The stars are shining brightly, wistfully twin¬
kling in a clear autumnal night; the lotus flowers bloom in
the early summer morning even before the sun rises; when the
spring comes, all the dead trees vie with one another to shoot
out their fresh green leaves, waking up from a long winter
sleep—do we not see here also some of our human trisna
asserting itself?

I do not know whether ultimate reality is one or two or
three or many more, but I feel that one trisna, infinitely diver-

126 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

sified and divcrsifiable, expresses itself making up this world
of ours. As trisnd is subject to infinite diversifications, it can
take infinitely variable forms. It is trisnd, therefore, that deter¬
mines form and structure. This is what is given to our con¬
sciousness, and our consciousness is the last word, we cannot
go any further.

Viewing the idea of transmigration from this standpoint, is
it not interesting to realize that we arc practicing this trans¬
migration in every moment of our lives, instead of going
through it after death and waiting for many a Kalpa to elapse?

I do not know whether transmigration can be proved or
maintained on the scientific level, but I know that it is an
inspiring theory and full of poetic suggestions, and I am satis¬
fied with this interpretation and do not seem to have any
desire to go beyond it. To me, the idea of transmigration has
a personal appeal, and as to its scientific and philosophical
implications, I leave it to the study of the reader.

XI

It may not be amiss here to add a word regarding the dif¬
ference of attitude between the earlier and the later Buddhists
toward the doctrine of transmigration and trisnd. As we have
already seen, the earlier Buddhist treatment of the subject is
always negative, for it tends to emphasize the aspect of libera¬
tion or emancipation. The later Buddhists, however, have
turned against this and strongly insist on trisnd as being most
fundamental and primary and needed for the general welfare
not only of mankind but of all other beings making up the en¬
tire world. They would declare that trisnd works in the wrong
way when it chooses bad associates; that is, when it combines
itself with the relative or psychological self, relying on the lat-

TRANSMIGRATION

127

ter as the ultimate reality and as the controlling principle of
life. Trisna then turns into the most ungovernable and insa¬
tiable upholder of power. What the earlier Buddhists wanted
to conquer was this kind of trisna, swerved from its primal
nature and becoming the thrall of egotistic impulses. Indeed,
they wished, instead of conquering it, to escape from this state
of thralldom. This made them negativists and escapists.

The later Buddhists realized that trisna was what consti¬
tuted human nature—in fact, everything and anything that at
all comes into existence—and that to deny trisna was com¬
mitting suicide; to escape from trisna was the height of con¬
tradiction or a deed of absolute impossibility; and that the
very thing that makes us wish to deny or to escape from trisna
was trisna itself. Therefore, all that we could do for ourselves,
or rather all that trisna could do for itself, was to make it turn
to itself, to purify itself from all its encumbrances and defile¬
ments, by means of transcendental knowledge ( prajna ). The
later Buddhists then let trisna work on in its own way without
being impeded by anything else. Trisna or “thirst” or “crav¬
ing” then comes to be known as mahakaruna, or “absolute
compassion,” which they consider the essence of Buddhahood
and Bodhisattvahood.

This trisna emancipated from all its encumbrances incar¬
nates itself in every possible form in order to achieve a univer¬
sal salvation of all beings, both sentient and non-sentient.
Therefore, when Buddha declares that he is “all-conquering,
all-knowing” he means that he has trisna in its purity. For
when trisna comes back to itself, it is all-conqueror and all-
knower, and also all-loving. It is this love or karuna or maitri
that makes the Buddha or Bodhisattva abandon his eternally
entering into a state of emptiness ( iunyala ) and subjects him-

128 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

self to transmigrate through the triple world. But in this case
it is better not to call it transmigration but incarnation. For
he assumes all kinds of form on his own account, that is,
voluntarily, in order to achieve a universal salvation. He is
then not any more a passive sufferer of karmic causation. He
is the “tent-designer” ( gahakaraka) himself . 1
» The Dhammapada , verses 151-2.

VI.

Crucifixion and Enlightenment

i

WHENEVER I see a crucified figure of Christ, I cannot help
thinking of the gap that lies deep between Christianity and
Buddhism. This gap is symbolic of the psychological division
separating the East from the West.

The individual ego asserts itself strongly in the West. In the
East, there is no ego. The ego is non-existent and, therefore,
there is no ego to be crucified.

We can distinguish two phases of the ego-idea. The first is
relative, psychological, or empirical. The second is the tran¬
scendental ego.

The empirical ego is limited. It has no existence of its own.
Whatever assertion it makes, it has no absolute value; it is
dependent on others. This is no more than the relative ego
and a psychologically established one. It is a hypothetical one;
it is subject to all kinds of conditions. It has, therefore, no
freedom.

What is it, then, that makes it feel free as if it were really
so independent and authentic? Whence this delusion?

The delusion comes from the transcendental ego being mis¬
takenly viewed as it works through the empirical ego and

129

I3O MYSTICISM: CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST

abides in it. Why docs the transcendental ego, thus mistakenly
viewed, suffer itself to be taken for the relative ego?

The fact is that the relative ego which corresponds to the
manovijnana of the Yogacara school has two aspects of rela¬
tionship, outer and inner.

Objectively speaking, the empirical or relative ego is one of
many other such egos. It is in the world of plurality; its con¬
tact with others is intermittent, mediated, and processional.
Inwardly, its contact or relationship with the transcendental
ego is constant, immediate, and total. Because of this the inner
relationship is not so distinctly cognizable as the outer one—
which, however, docs not mean that the cognition is altogether
obscure and negligible and of no practical worth in our daily
life.

On the contrary, the cognition of the transcendental ego at
the back of the relative ego sheds light into the source of con¬
sciousness. It brings us in direct contact with the unconscious.

It is evident that this inner cognition is not the ordinary
kind of knowledge which we generally have about an external
thing.

The difference manifests itself in two ways. The object of
ordinary knowledge is regarded as posited in space and time
and subject to all kinds of scientific measurements. The object
of the inner cognition is not an individual object. The tran¬
scendental ego cannot be singled out for the relative ego to be
inspected by it. It is so constantly and immediately contacted
by the relative ego that when it is detached from the relative
ego it ceases to be itself. The transcendental ego is the rela¬
tive ego and the relative ego is the transcendental ego; and
yet they are not one but two; they are two and yet not two.
They are separable intellectually but not in fact. We cannot

CRUCIFIXION AND ENLIGHTENMENT 131

make one stand as seer and the other as the seen, for the seer
is the seen, and the seen is the seer.

When this unique relationship between the transcendental
ego and the relative ego is not adequately comprehended or
intuited, there is a delusion. The relative ego imagines itself to
be a free agent, complete in itself, and tries to act accordingly.

The relative ego by itself has no existence independent of
the transcendental ego. The relative ego is nothing. It is when
the relative ego is deluded as to its real nature that it assumes
itself and usurps the position of the one behind it.

It is true that the transcendental ego requires the relative
ego to give itself a form through which the transcendental ego
functions. But the transcendental ego is not to be identified
with the relative ego to the extent that the disappearance of
the relative ego means also the disappearance of the transcen¬
dental ego. The transcendental ego is the creative agent and
the relative ego is the created. The relative ego is not some¬
thing that is prior to the transcendental ego standing in op¬
position to the latter. The relative ego comes out of the
transcendental ego and is wholly and depcndently related to
the transcendental ego. Without the transcendental ego, the
relative ego is zero. The transcendental ego is, after all, the
mother of all things.

The Oriental mind refers all things to the transcendental
ego, though not always consciously and analytically, and sees
them finally reduced to it, whereas the West attaches itself to
the relative ego and starts from it.

Instead of relating the relative ego to the transcendental ego
and making the latter its starting point, the Western mind
tenaciously clings to it. But since the relative ego is by nature
defective, it is always found unsatisfactory and frustrating and

132 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

leading to a series of disasters, and as the Western mind be¬
lieves in the reality of this troublemaker, it wants to make
short work of it. Here we can also see something character¬
istically Western, for they have crucified it.

In a way the Oriental mind is not inclined toward the cor¬
poreality of things. The relative ego is quietly and without
much fuss absorbed into the body of the transcendental ego.
That is why we sec the Buddha lie serenely in Nirvana under
the twin Sala trees, mourned not only by his disciples but by
all beings, non-human as well as human, non-sentient as well
as sentient. As there is from the first no ego-substance, there
is no need for crucifixion.

In Christianity crucifixion is needed, corporeality requires a
violent death, and as soon as this is done, resurrection must
take place in one form or another, for they go together. As
Paul says, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain
and your faith is also vain. ... Ye are yet in sins.” 1 The
crucifixion in fact has a double sense: one individualistic and
the other humanistic. In the first sense it symbolizes the de¬
struction of the individual ego, while in the second it stands
for the doctrine of vicarious atonement whereby all our sins
arc atoned for by making Christ die for them. In both cases
the dead must be resurrected. Without the latter, destruction
has no meaning whatever. In Adam we die, in Christ we
live—this must be understood in the double sense as above.

What is needed in Buddhism is enlightenment, neither
crucifixion nor resurrection. A resurrection is dramatic and
human enough, but there is still the odor of the body in it.
In enlightenment, there are heavenliness and a genuine sense of
transcendence. Things of earth go through renovation and a

1 1 Cor., 15:14-17.

CRUCIFIXION AND ENLIGHTENMENT 133

refreshing transformation. A new sun rises above the horizon
and the whole universe is revealed.

It is through this experience of enlightenment that every
being individually and collectively attains Buddhahood. It is
not only a certain historically and definitely ascertainable be¬
ing who is awakened to a state of enlightenment but the whole
cosmos with every particle of dust which goes to the composi¬
tion of it. I lift my finger and it illuminates the three thousand
chiliocosms and an asamkheyya of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
greet me, not excluding ordinary human beings.

Crucifixion has no meaning whatsoever unless it is followed
by resurrection. But the soil of the earth still clings to it though
the resurrected one goes up to heaven. It is different with en¬
lightenment, for it instantly transforms the earth itself into
the Pure Land. You do not have to go up to heaven and wait
for this transformation to take place here.

n

Christian symbolism has much to do with the suffering of
man. The crucifixion is the climax of all suffering. Buddhists
also speak much about suffering and its climax is the Buddha
serenely sitting under the Bodhi tree by the river Niranjana.
Christ carries his suffering to the end of his earthly life whereas
Buddha puts an end to it while living and afterward goes on
preaching the gospel of enlightenment until he quietly passes
away under the twin Sala trees. The trees are standing upright
and the Buddha, in Nirvana, lies horizontally like eternity
itself.

Christ hangs helpless, full of sadness on the vertically erected
cross. To the Oriental mind, the sight is almost unbearable.
Buddhists arc accustomed to the sight of Jizo Bosatsu (Kshiti-

134 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

garbha Bodhisattva) by the roadside. The figure is a symbol of
tenderness. He stands upright but what a contrast to the
Christian symbol of suffering!

Now let us make a geometric comparison between a statue
sitting cross-legged in meditation and a crucified one. First of
all, verticality suggests action, motion, and aspiration. Hori-
zontality, as in the case of the lying Buddha, makes us think
of peace and satisfaction or contentment. A sitting figure gives
us the notion of solidity, firm conviction and immovability.
The body sets itself down with the hips and folded legs se¬
curely on the ground. The center of gravity is around the
loins. This is the securest position a biped can assume while
living. This is also the symbol of peace, tranquillity, and self-
assurance. A standing position generally suggests a fighting
spirit, either defensive or offensive. It also gives one the feeling
of personal self-importance born of individuality and power.

When man began to stand on his two legs, this demon¬
strated that he was now distinct from the rest of the creatures
walking on all fours. He is henceforth becoming more inde¬
pendent of the earth because of his freed forepaws and of the
consequent growth of his brains. This growth and independ¬
ence on the part of man arc constantly misleading him to think
that he now is master of Nature and can put it under his
complete control. This, in combination with the Biblical tradi¬
tion that man dominates all things on earth, has helped the
human idea of universal domination to overgrow even beyond
its legitimate limitation. The result is that we talk so much
about conquering nature, except our own human nature
which requires more disciplining and control and perhaps sub¬
jugation than anything else.

On the other hand the sitting cross-legged and the posture

CRUCIFIXION AND ENLIGHTENMENT 1 35

of meditation make a man feel not detached from the earth
and yet not so irrevocably involved in it that he has to go on
smelling it and wallowing in it. True, he is supported by the
earth but he sits on it as if he were the crowning symbol of
transcendence. He is neither attached to the soil nor detached
from it.

We talk these days very much about detachment as if at¬
tachment is so fatal and hateful a thing that we must some¬
how try to achieve the opposite, non-attachment. But I do not
know why we have to move away from things lovable and
really conducive to our social and individual welfare. Kanzan
and Jittoku enjoyed their freedom and welfare in their own
way. Their life can be considered one of utter detachment as
we the outsiders look at it. Sakyamuni spent his seventy-nine
years by going from one place to another and teaching his
gospel of enlightenment to all sorts of people varied in every
way, social, intellectual, and economic, and finally passed
away quietly by the river Niranjana. Socrates was bom and
died in Athens and used his energy and wisdom in exercising
his office as the midwife of men's thoughts, bringing down
philosophy from heaven to earth and finally calmly taking his
cup of hemlock surrounded by his disciples and ending his
life of seventy years.

What shall we say about these lives when each of them ap¬
parently enjoyed his to the utmost of his heart’s content? Is it
a life of attachment or of detachment? I would say that, as
far as my understanding goes, each had his life of freedom
unhampered by any ulterior interest and, therefore, instead of
using such terms as attachment or detachment in order to
evaluate the life of those mentioned above is it not better to
call it a life of absolute freedom?

136 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
II is enlightenment that brings peace and freedom among
us.

111

When Buddha attained his supreme enlightenment, he was
in his sitting posture; he was neither attached to nor detached
from the earth. He was one with it, he grew out of it, and
yet he was not crushed by it. As a newborn baby free from
all sankharas, he declared, standing, with one hand pointing
to the sky and the other to the earth, “Above heaven, below
heaven, I alone am the honored one!'’ Buddhism has three
principal figures, symbolizing (1) nativity, (2) enlighten¬
ment, and (3) Nirvana, that is standing, sitting, and lying—
the three main postures man can assume. From this we see
that Buddhism is deeply concerned with human affairs in
various forms of peaceful employment and not in any phase
of warlike activities.

Christianity, on the other hand, presents a few things which
are difficult to comprehend, namely, the symbol of crucifixion.
The crucified Christ is a terrible sight and I cannot help asso¬
ciating it with the sadistic impulse of a psychically affected
brain.

Christians would say that crucifixion means crucifying the
self or the flesh, since without subduing the self we cannot
attain moral perfection.

This is where Buddhism differs from Christianity.

Buddhism declares that there is from the very beginning no
self to crucify. To think that there is the self is the start of all
errors and evils. Ignorance is at the root of all things that go
wrong.

As there is no self, no crucifixion is needed, no sadism is to

CRUCIFIXION AND ENLIGHTENMENT

X 37

be practiced, no shocking sight is to be displayed by the road¬
side.

According to Buddhism, the world is the network of karmic
interrelationships and there is no agent behind the net who
holds it for his willful management. To have an insight into
the truth of the actuality of things, the first requisite is to
dispel the cloud of ignorance. To do this, one must discipline
oneself in seeing clearly and penetratingly into the suchness of
things.

Christianity tends to emphasize the corporeality of our exist¬
ence. Hence its crucifixion, and hence also the symbolism of
eating the flash and drinking the blood. To non-Christians,
the very thought of drinking the blood is distasteful.

Christians would say: This is the way to realize the idea of
oneness with Christ. But non-Christians would answer: Could
not the idea of oneness be realized in some other way, that is,
more peacefully, more rationally, more humanly, more hu¬
manely, less militantly, and less violently?

When we look at the Nirvana picture, we have an entirely
different impression. What a contrast between the crucifixion-
image of Christ and the picture of Buddha lying on a bed sur¬
rounded by his disciples and other beings non-human as well
as human! Is it not interesting and inspiring to see all kinds
of animals coming together to mourn the death of Buddha?

That Christ died vertically on the cross whereas Buddha
passed away horizontally—does this not symbolize the funda¬
mental difference in more than one sense between Buddhism
and Christianity?

Verticality means action, combativencss, exclusiveness, while
horizontally means peace, tolerance, and broad-mindedness.
Being active, Christianity has something in it which stirs,

138

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

agitates, and disturbs. Being combative and exclusive, Chris¬
tianity tends to wield an autocratic and sometimes domineer¬
ing power over others, in spite of its claim to democracy and
universal brotherhood.

In these respects, Buddhism proves to be just the opposite
of Christianity. The horizontality of the Nirvana-Buddha may
sometimes suggest indolence, indifference, and inactivity
though Buddhism is really the religion of strenuousness and
infinite patience. But there is no doubt that Buddhism is a
religion of peace, serenity, equanimity, and equilibrium. It
refuses to be combative and exclusive. On the contrary, it
.espouses broad-mindedness, universal tolerance, and aloofness
from worldly discriminations.

To stand up means that one is ready for action, for fight¬
ing and overpowering. It also implies that someone is standing
opposed to you, who may be ready to strike you down if you
do not strike him down first. This is “the self” which Chris¬
tianity wants to crucify. As this enemy always threatens you,
you have to be combative. But when you clearly perceive that
this deadly enemy who keeps you on the alert is non-existent,
when you understand that it is no more than a nightmare, a
mere delusion to posit a self as something trying to overpower
you, you then will be for the first time at peace with yourself
and also with the world at large, you then can afford to lie
down and identify yourself with all things.

After all is said there is one thing we all must remember so
as to bring antagonistic thoughts together and see how they
can be reconciled. I suggest this: When horizontality remains
horizontal all the time, the result is death. When vertieality
keeps up its rigidity, it collapses. In truth, the horizontal is
horizontal only when it is conceived as implying the tendency

CRUCIFIXION AND ENLIGHTENMENT

*39

to rise, as a phase of becoming something else, as a line to
move to tridimensionality. So with verticality. As long as it
stays unmoved vertically, it ceases to be itself. It mast become
flexible, acquire resiliency, it must balance itself with mova-
bility.

(The cross [Greek] and the swastika arc closely related,
probably derived from the same source. The swastika how¬
ever is dynamic whereas the cross symbolizes static symmetry.
The Latin cross is most likely the development of a sign of
another nature.)

Section Two

Kono-mama (“I Am That I Am” 1 )

I

THE RELIGIOUS consciousness is awakened when we en¬
counter a network of great contradictions running through our
human life. When this consciousness comes to itself we feel as
if our being were on the verge of a total collapse. We cannot
regain the sense of security until we take hold of something
overriding the contradictions.

Whatever contradictions we may experience they would not
trouble us unless we were philosophers, because each one of
us is not supposed to be a thinker of some kind. The contra¬
dictions however in most cases assert themselves in the field
of the will. When we are assailed on this side, the question is
felt most acutely, like a piercing arrow. When the will to
power is exposed to constant threat in one form or another,
one cannot help becoming meditative about life.

“What is the meaning of life?” then demands not an ab¬
stract solution but comes upon one as a concrete personal chal¬
lenge. The solution must be in terms of experience. We then
abandon all the contradictions that appear on the plane of

1 “And Cod said unto Moses, I am that I am: and he said, Thus
shall thou say unio the children of Israel. I am hath sent one unto
you." Exodus. 3:14.

144 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
intellection, for we must feci in a practical way contented with
life.

The Japanese word kono-mama is the most fitting expres¬
sion for this state of spiritual contentment. Kono-mama is the
is-ness of a thing. God is in his way of is-ness, the flowers
bloom in their way of is-ness, the birds fly in their way of
is-ness—they arc all perfect in their is-ncss.

Christians ascribe all these ways of is-ncss to God whoever
he may be and remain satisfied with themselves in the midst
of contradictions. John Donne (Sermon VII) has said: "God
is so omnipresent . . . that God is an angel in an angel, and
a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw.” Eckhart has his
way of expressing the same idea: “A flea to the extent that it
is in God, ranks above the highest angel in his own right.
Thus, in God, all things arc equal and arc God himself." 3

u

A Zen poet-master 3 sings:

In the foreground precious stones and agates,

In the rear agates and precious stones;

To the East Kwannon and Seishi,

To the West Monju and Fugen,‘

In the middle there is a streamer:

As a breeze passes by
It flutters, “hit-lu,” “hu-lu.”

* Blakney, p. 205.

* Coio Hoyen, died 1104.

* Thete are the chief MahiySna Bodhisattvaj:

1 . Avalokiteivara

2. Mahiiithimaprapta

3. Manjuiri

4. Samantabhadra

KONO-MAMA (“i AM THAT I AM”) I 45

This “hu-lu” "hu-lu” (in Chinese) or “fura-fura” in Jap¬
anese reminds one of Saichi's outfiowings:

1

Saichi's mind is like the gourd [on water],

Floating all the time,

Blown by the winds, it flows on floating
To Amida’s Pure Land.

The one difference, we may point out, between Shin and Zen
is that the Zen masters would not say “To Amida’s Pure
Land.” They would not mind if the gourd floats on to hell
though they would not object to floating on to the Pure Land,
either. This is not due to their indifference, fura-fura-ncss.
Superficially they may seem so, but only superficially. Their
fura-fura-ncss really comes from their deep experience of the
Emptiness which concerns a life altogether transcendental or,
we might say, “supernatural.” Most people fail to distinguish
the moral life from the inner transcendental life, which, it may
be asserted, has a life of its own and lives altogether separate
from an individually differentiated life which has its values in
a world of utilitarian purposiveness.

To put all this again into Christian terminology, Eckhart
declares:

[If you can] take what comes to you through him, then what¬
ever it is, it becomes divine in itself; shame becomes honor, bitter¬
ness becomes sweet, and gross darkness, clear light. Everything
takes its flavor from God and becomes divine; everything that
happens betrays God when a man’s mind works that way; things
all have this one taste; and therefore God is the same to this man
alike in life’s bitterest moments and sweetest pleasures.®

• Blakney, p. 17.

146 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

Eckhart naturally refers everything to God though his God
somewhat resembles Saichi’s “Namu-amida-butsu.” We “crea¬
tures” as coming from God just follow his will " sono-mama ”
and have nothing to say, good or bad, as to what we do. If I
take this for the Christian understanding of fura-fura-ntss,
will Christians be offended?

Eckhart has a strange but interesting question in this con¬
nection :

A question is raised about those angels who live with us, serv¬
ing and guarding us, as to whether or not they have less joy in
identity than the angels in heaven and whether they are hindered
at all in their [proper] activities by serving and guarding us. No!
Not at all! Their joy is not diminished, nor their equality, because
the angel's work is to do the will of God and the will of God is
the angel’s work. If God told an angel to go to a tree and pick
off the caterpillars, the angel would be glad to do it and it would
be bliss to him because it is God’s will . 4

The Shin pattern of expression is subjective and personal in
contrast to the Zen way which is objective and impersonal,
showing that Shin is more concerned with the karur.d aspect of
Reality while Zen tends to emphasize the prajhd aspect. The
Shin faith is based on Amida’s pranidhana, which is summa¬
rized in the “Namu-amida-butsu” known as myogo ( ndmad -
heya in Sanskrit), meaning “the Name.” The myogo may
sound abstract but it is the integrated form of subject and
object, of devotee and Amida, of Namu (worshiper) and
Buddha (the worshiped), of ki and ho . 7 When the myogo is
pronounced, the mystic identification takes place:

« Ibid., p. 205.
1 See infra.

147

KONO-MAMA (“i AM THAT I AM”)

2

As I pronounce “Namu-amida-butsu”

I feci my thoughts and hindrances are like the spring snows:

They thaw away as soon as they fall on the ground.

3

Not knowing why, not knowing why—

This is my support;

Not knowing why—

This is the “Namu-amida-butsu.’'

4

Amida is this: “See, here I am!”

Namu and Amida—

They make out the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

O Nyorai-san, such things I write.

How happy!

These arc from Saichi. His experiences are given direct ut¬
terance here. As soon as the “Namu-amida-butsu” is pro¬
nounced he as “Namu” ( ki ) melts into the body of Amida
(ho) which is “the ground” and “support.” He cannot reason
it out, but “Here I am!” What has taken place is the iden¬
tification of Amida (ho) and Saichi (ki). But the identifica¬
tion is not Saichi’s vanishing. Saichi is still conscious of his
individuality and addresses himself to Amida Buddha in a
rather familiar fashion saying, “O Nyorai-san!” and congratu¬
lating himself on his being able to write about the happy event.

The following is the explosion of Mrs. Chiyono Sasaki of
Kona on the island of Hawaii, who is a myokonin belonging
to the Hongwanji Temple under Rev. Shonen Tamekuni:

148 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

" Kono-mamma” ; 8 I am so pleased with this, I bow my head.
Good or bad—’tis " kono-mamma”!

Right or wrong—’tis “kono-mamma”!

True or false—’tis “ kono-mamma”!

“Is” or “is not’’—’tis " kono-mamma”!

Weep or laugh—'tis “kono-mamma”!

And " kono-mamma” is " kono-mamma”!

If you say " kono-mamma” is not enough, you are too greedy.
The “kono-mamma” never changes, nor can it be changed.

It is only because you arc my Oya,

You call me to come “sono-mama” [“just as you are”].

It is all due to our not knowing that “kono-mamma” is
“kono-mama”

That we wander about from one place to another.

That I am now inside the fold is due to the virtue of Oya’s
compassion,

And this pleases the Oya and also pleases me;

Oya and I live together then.

Each time I learn of his long-suffering labor,

How miserable I am!

How wretched I feel!

Ashamed of myself I resume my Nrmbutsu:
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

"Kono-mama” we may think, sounds too easy and there is
nothing spiritual or transcendental in it. If we bring this out
in the world of particulars, everything here will be left to the
struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. It is the
most dangerous doctrine to be put forward, especially to our
present world. But it may be worth asking, Is this doctrine
of “kono-mama” really so dangerous? 9 Is our present world

* This is her colloquialism for kono-mama, "as-it-is-ness.”

* Saichi has this to say in regard to "kono-mama":

KONO-MAMA (“i AM THAT I AM”) I 49

so valuable, deserving a careful preservation, where the knowl¬
edge of “that something” is fading away—“that something in
the soul so closely akin to God,” as Eckhart tells us? When we
did not have this knowledge, Eckhart regarded our individual¬
istic ego-centered life “of no more importance than a manure
worm.” Is a world inhabited by this sort of existence really
worth preservation?

Eckhart’s passage is a very strong one:

As I have often said, there is something in the soul so closely
akin to God that it is already one with him and need never be
united to him. It is unique and has nothing in common with
anything else. It has no significance whatsoever—none! Anything
created is nothing but that Something is apart from and strange
to all creation. If one were wholly this, he would be both un¬
created and unlike any creature. If any corporeal thing or any¬
thing fragile were included in that unity, it, too, would be like
the essence of that unity. If I should find myself in this essence,
even for a moment, I should regard my earthly selfhood as of
no more importance than a manure worm . 10

Though we all say by word of mouth "kono-mama"

We really do not know what this means.

There is no ** kono-mama " to him who inattentively listens to
the Dharma ,

There is no "kono-mama" to him.

I am one of those heretics who know not what " kono-mama "
means;

A heretic indeed am I whose name is Saichi.

Saichi must have heard a preacher talking about " kono-mama” warn¬
ing the audience to be on their guard not to take it in the sense of in¬
difference or dissipation or giving oneself to impulses of the moment
which grow out of the one-sided self-power. The "kono-mama" doctrine
is likely to turn into a “heresy” when it is only intellectually understood
and not experienced in our innermost consciousness.

10 Blakney, p. 205.

150 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

hi

The doctrine of " kono-mama” is based on the psychology
growing out of the experience of the Eckhartian “that some¬
thing.’’ One need not be metaphysically analytical in order to
speak of it as eloquently as Eckhart docs. But there is no doubt
that Mrs. Sasaki, the author of the foregoing lines, tasted “that
something” though she had no learning and mentality equal
to the great German theologian. Saichi is more “learned” in
his way and calls it “Buddha-wisdom” ( Buddhajiid) which
he must have heard from his preachers. Buddha-wisdom is
really beyond our mere human understanding which is based
on sensuous experiences and “logical” manipulations.

5

Buddha-wisdom is beyond thought,

Leading me to the Pure Land!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

6

Perfectly indifferent I am!

No joy, no gratefulness,

Yet nothing to grieve over the absence of gratefulness.

7

Doing nothing, doing nothing, doing nothing!

Nyorai-san takes me along with him!

I am happy!

Saichi's “indifference” and “doing-nothing” are another
and negative way of asserting " kono-mama " or “sono-mama”
Buddha-wisdom is in one sense all-affirmation but in the other
all-negation. It says “yes, yes” or " sono-mama” to everything
that comes its way but at the same time it upholds nothing,

KONO-MAMA (“l AM THAT I AM**) 151

saying: “neli, neti.” When Saichi is in the negative mood, his
bemoanings are: “How wretched!” “How miserable!” “I am
sinner!” “I am a great liar.” But when in the positive mood,
everything changes. How jubilant he is! He is thankful for
everything, he is most appreciative of Amida’s free gift and
wonders how he deserves it all. In spite of all this apparent
fickleness or contradiction, Saichi keeps his mind well bal¬
anced and at peace, because his being is securely held in the
hands of Amida and rests in the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

8

Nothing is left to Saichi,

Except a joyful heart nothing is left to him;

Neither good nor bad has he, all is taken away from him;
Nothing is left to him!

To have nothing—how completely satisfying!

Everything has been carried away by the “Namu-amida-butsu.”
He is thoroughly at home with himself:

This is indeed the "Namu-amida-butsu”!

9

"O Saichi.”

"Yes, here I am."

"Where is your companion?"

"My companion is Amida-Buddha."

"Where arc you?"

"I am in Amida."

"O Saichi."

"Yes.”

"What is meant by ‘all taken in and nothing left out’?”

“It means ‘captured altogether’."

How grateful!

"Namu-amida-butsu!"

I5 2 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
T o clarify further Saichi’s inner life, I quote more of hvs

utterances:

10

All my cravings are taken away,

And the whole world is my “Namu-amida-butsu.

11

Saichi, all has been taken away from you,

And the Nembutsu is given—"Namu-amida-butsu.

12 • -u

None of my evil passions, as many as 84,000 remain with me.
Every one of them has been taken away by the Namu-amida-
butsu.”

13

My mind altogether taken captive by bonnd 11
Has now been taken away together with bonnd . ^

The mind is enwrapped in the “Namu-amida-butsu —
Thanks are due to the “Namu-amida-butsu'’!

14

Saichi has nothing—which is joy.

Outside this there’s nothing.

Both good and evil—all’s taken away,

Nothing’s left. . .

To have nothing—this is the release, this is the peace.
All’s taken away by the “Namu-amida-butsu,”

This is truly the peace.

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

is Evil passions.

KONO-MAMA (“i AM THAT I AM”) 153

With all this, however, we must not think that Saichi
turned into a piece of wood which is free from all passions,
good as well as bad. He was quite alive with them all. He was
as human as we are ourselves. As long as we arc what we are
none of us can be released from the burden. To get rid of it
means to get rid of our own existence which is the end of
ourselves, the end of all things, the end of Amida himself,
who has now no object for his updya (or means) to exercise.
The passions must remain with us all, without them there
will be no joy, no happiness, no gratitude, no sociality, no
human intercourse. Saichi is quite right when he asks Amida
to leave tsumi with him ; 12 he fully realizes that without tsumi
he cannot experience Amida. Our existence is so conditioned
on this earth that we must have one when we wish to have
the other, and this wishing is no other than the passions which
constitute tsumi. We arc always involved in this contradiction,
which is life, and we live it and by living it all is solved. The
contradictioas of any sort all turn into the sono-mama-ncss of
things. All that is needed is the experience of nothingness,
which is suchncss, kono-mama.

We can say that Saichi’s free utterances, occupying more
than sixty schoolchildren’s notebooks, are rhapsodies on his
living the grand contradiction itself which greets us as ki
and ho li at every phase of our existence. Saichi lives this con-
,a See infra.

13 Ki, originally meaning “hinge," means in Shin especially the dev¬
otee who approaches Amida in the attitude of dependence. He stands
as far as his self-power is concerned against Amida. H6 is "Dharma,”
"Reality," "Amida," and "the other-power.” This opposition appears
to our intellect as contradiction and to our will as a situation implying
anxiety, fear, and insecurity. When ki and h6 arc united in the myOgd
as "Namu-amida-butsu," the Shin devotee attains anjin, "peace of
mind."

O Saichi, if you wish to see Buddha,

K

154 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

tradiction and loves it to the fullest extent of his being. Each
plane-shaving which rolls off his g^a-making work table tells
him about the world-drama which defies our attempt at solu¬
tion on the plane of intellection. But the simple-minded
Amida-intoxicatcd Saichi solves it quite readily by making
each shaving bear his inscriptions: “What a despicable man
I am!” and “How grateful Saichi is for Oya-sama's infinitely
expanding compassionate heart!” “Poor Saichi is heavily
Humt-ladcn and yet he has no desire to part with it, for tsumi
is the very condition that makes him feel the presence of
Amida and his Namu-amida-butsu.” Saichi lives the grand
world-contradiction, his living is the solving.

v

Shinran, the founder of the Shin sect, presents this com¬
ment on the thought of " kono-mama ” Since he was a Chinese
scholar, he did not use the Japanese vernacular but its Chinese
equivalent, tzu-jen fa-erh, the Japanese reading of which is
jineti honi.

Ji means “of itself,” or “by itself.” As it is not due to the
designing of man but to Nyorai's vow [that man is born in the
Pure Land], it is said that man is naturally or spontaneously
( nen ), led to the Pure Land. The devotee does not make any
conscious self-designing efForts, for they arc altogether ineffective
to achieve the end. Jinen thus means that as one’s rebirth into
the Pure Land is wholly due to the working of Nyorai’s vow-

Look within your own heart where ki and h& are one
As Namu-amida-butsu—

This is Saichi's Oya-sama.

How happy with the favor!

Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu.

KONO-MAMA (“i AM THAT I AM*’) X 55

power, it is for the devotee just to believe in Nyorai and let his
vow work itself out.

HOni means “it is so because it is so”; and in the present case
it means that it is in the nature of Amida’s vow-power that we
are born in the Pure Land. Therefore, the way in which the
other-power works may be defined as “meaning of no-meaning,”
that is to say, it works in such a way as if not working [so
natural, so spontaneous, so effortless, so absolutely free arc its
workings].

Amida’s vow accomplishes everything and nothing is left for
the devotee to design or plan for himself. Amida makes the dev¬
otee simply say “Namu-amida-butsu” in order to be saved by
Amida, and the latter welcomes him to the Pure Land. As far
as the devotee is concerned, he docs not know what is good or
bad for him, all is left to Amida. This is what I—Shinran—have
learned.

Amida’s vow is meant to make us all attain supreme Buddha*
hood. The Buddha is formless and because of his formlessness
he is known as “all by himself’ ( jinen ). If he had a form, he
would not be called supreme Nyorai. In order to let us know
how formless he is, he is called Amida. This is what I—Shin¬
ran—have learned.

When you have understood this, you need not any more be
concerned with jinen [“being by itself”]. When you turn your
attention to it, the “meaningless meaning” assumes a meaning
[which is defeating its own purpose].

All this comes from Buddhajm I, which is beyond comprehensi¬
bility.

From this commentary of Shinran on jinen honi, we can
see what understanding he had of the working of Amida’s
pranidhana (“vows”) or of the other-power. “Meaningless
meaning” may be thought of as having no sense, no definite

156 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

content, whereby we can concretely grasp what it means. The
idea is that there was no teleology or eschatological concep¬
tion on the part of Amida when he took those forty-eight
“vows,” that all the ideas expressed in them arc the spon¬
taneous outflow of his mahakaruna, great compassionate
heart, which is Amida himself. Amida has no exterior motive
other than a feeling of sorrow for us suffering sentient beings
and a wish to save us from going through an endless cycle of
births and deaths. The “vows” arc the spontaneous expression
of his love or compassion.

As for the sentient beings, they arc helpless because they are
limited existences, karma-bound, thoroughly conditioned by
space, time, and causation. As long as they are in this state of
finitude, they can never attain Nirvana or enlightenment by
themselves. This inability to achieve emancipation is in the
very nature of our existence. The more wc try the deeper we
get involved in an inextricable mess. The help has to come
from a source other than this limited existence, but this source
must not be something wholly outside us in the sense that it
has no understanding of our limitations, and hence is not in
any way sympathetic with us. The source of help must have
the same heart as ours so that there will be a current of com¬
passion running between the two. The source-power must be
within us and yet outside. If not within us, it could not under¬
stand us; if not outside, it would be subject to the same con¬
ditions. This is an eternal problem—to be and not to be, to
be within and yet to be outside, to be infinite and yet ready
to serve the finite, to be full of meaning and yet not to have
any meaning. Hence the incomprehensibility of Buddhajnd,
hence the incomprehensibility of the "Namu-amida-butsu.”

KONO-MAMA (“r AM THAT I AM*’) 157

Saichi’s version of Shinran has its own charm and original¬
ity from his inner experience which defies our logical analysis:

15

The Namu-amida-butsu inexhaustible,

However much one recites it, it is inexhaustible;

Saichi’s heart is inexhaustible;

Oya’s heart is inexhaustible.

Oya’s heart and Saichi’s heart,

Ki and hQ, arc of one body which is the Namu-amida-butsu.
However much this is recited, it is inexhaustible.

16

How wretched!—

This comes out spontaneously.

How grateful for Buddha’s favor!—

This too spontaneously.

Ki and /id, both are Oya’s working:

All comes out in perfection.

17

Saichi’s Nyorai-san,

Where is he?

Saichi’s Nyorai-san is no other than the oneness of ki and ho.
How grateful I am! "Namu-amida-butsu!”
"Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

18

Such a Buddha! he is really a good Buddha!
He follows me wherever I go,

He takes hold of my heart.

The saving voice of the six syllables
Is heard as the oneness of ki and /id—

158 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

I have altogether no words for this;

How sweet the mercy!

Eckhart has his way of commenting on all these ideas which
we may take as exclusively Shin.

If you suffer for God’s sake and for God alone, that suffering
does not hurt and is not hard to bear, for God takes the burden
of it. If an hundredweight were loaded on my neck and then
someone else took it at once on his neck, I had just as lief it
were an hundred as one. It would not then be heavy to me and
would not hurt me. To make a long story short, what one suffers
through God and for God alone is made sweet and easy. 14

It [the will] is perfect and right when it has no special refer¬
ence, when it has cut loose from self, and when it is transformed
and adapted to the will of God. Indeed, the more like this the
will is, the more perfect and true it is. With a will like this, any¬
thing is possible, whether love or anything else. 1 *

Supposing, however that all such [experiences] were really of
love, even then it would not be best. We ought to get over
amusing ourselves with such raptures for the sake of that better
love, and to accomplish through loving service what men most
need, spiritually, socially, or physically. As I have often said,
if a person were in such a rapturous state as St. Paul once
entered, and he knew of a sick man who wanted a cup of soup,
it would be far better to withdraw from the rapture for love’s
sake and serve him who is in need. 1 ®

14 Blakney, p. 210.

18 Ibid., p. 13.

Appendices

VIII.

Notes on “Namu-amida-butsu”

THE ULTIMATE goal of the teaching of the Pure Land is
to understand the meaning of “ Nembutsu whereby its fol¬
lowers will be admitted into the Pure Land. In the Nembutsu,
contradictions dissolve and arc reconciled in “the steadfastness
of faith.”

Nembutsu literally means “to think of Buddha.” Nen (rtien
in Chinese and smriti in Sanskrit) is “to keep in memory.” In
Shin however it is more than a mere remembering of Buddha,
it is thinking his Name, 1 holding it in mind. The Name consists
of six characters or syllables: na-mu-a-mi-da-buts(u) in Jap¬
anese pronunciation and nan-wu-o-mi-lo-fo in Chinese. In
actuality, the Name contains more than Buddha’s name, for
Namu is added to it. Namu is namas (or namo) in Sanskrit
and means “adoration” or “salutation.” The Name therefore
is “Adoration for Amida Buddha,” and this is made to stand
for Amida’s “Name.”

The interpretation the Shin people give to the “Namu-amida-
butsu’* is more than literal though not at all mystical or eso¬
teric. It is in fact philosophical. When Amida is regarded as
the object of adoration, he is separated from the devotee stand-

> MyOgd, ming-hao in Chinese, ndmadheya in Sanskrit.

161

162 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

ing all by himself. But when Namu is added to the Name the
whole thing acquires a new meaning because it now sym¬
bolizes the unification of Amida and the devotee, wherein the
duality no longer exists. This however does not indicate that
the devotee is lost or absorbed in Amida so that his individual¬
ity is no longer tenable as such. The unity is there as “Namu”
plus “Amidabutsu,” but the Namu (ki) has not vanished. It
is there as if it were not there. This ambivalence is the mystery
of the Nembutsu. In Shin terms it is the oneness of the ki and
the ho, and the mystery is called the incomprehensibility of •
Buddha-wisdom ( Buddhajna ). The Shin teachings revolve
around this axis of incomprehensibility ( fushigi in Japanese,
acintya in Sanskrit).

Now we sec that the Nembutsu, or the Myogo, or the
“Namu-amida-butsu” is at the center of the Shin faith. When
this is experienced, the devotee has the “steadfastness of faith,”
even before he is in actuality ushered into the Pure Land. For
the Pure Land is no more an event after death, it is right in
this sahalokadhatu, the world of particulars. According to
Saichi, he goes to the Pure Land as if it were the next-door
house and comes back at his pleasure to his own.

1

I am a happy man, indeed!

I visit the Pure Land as often as I like:

I’m there and I’m back,

I’m there and I’m back,

I’m there and I’m back,

“Namu-amida-butsu! Namu-amida-butsu!”

When Saichi is in the Pure Land, “there” stands for this
world; and when he is in this world, “there” is the Pure Land;

NOTES ON “NAMU-AMIDA-BUTSU” 1 63

he is back and forth between here and there. The fact is that
he sees no distinction between the two. Often he goes further
than this:

2

How happy I am!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

I am the Land of Bliss,

I am Oya-sama.

“Namu-amida-butsu! Namu-amida-butsu!”

3

Shining in glory is Buddha’s Pure Land,

And this is my Pure Land!

“Namu-amida-butsu! Namu-amida-butsu!”

4

O Saichi, where is your Land of Bliss?

My Land of Bliss is right here.

Where is the line of division

Between this world and the Land of Bliss?

The eye 2 is the line of division.

To Saichi “Oya-sama” or “Oya” not only means Amida him¬
self but frequently personifies the “Namu-amida-butsu.” To
him, sometimes, these three arc the same thing: Amida as
Oya-sama, the Myogo (“Namu-amida-butsu”), and Saichi.

5

When I worship thee, O Buddha,

This is a Buddha worshiping another Buddha.

And it is thou who makest this fact known to me, O Buddha!
For this favor Saichi is most grateful.

2 This reminds us of Eckhart.

164 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
When we go through these lines endlessly flowing out of
Saichi’s inner experiences of the “Namu-amida-butsu” as the
symbol of the oneness of the ki and the ho, we feel something
infinitely alluring in the life of this simple-minded geta -maker
in the remote parts of the Far Eastern country. Eckhart is
tremendous, Zen is almost unapproachable, but Saichi is so
homely that one feels like visiting his workshop and watching
those shavings drop off the block of wood.

6

O Saichi, what makes you work?

I work by the “Namu-amida-butsu."

"Namu-amida-butsu! Namu-amida-butsu!”

7

How grateful I feel!

Everything I do in this world—

My daily work for livelihood—

This is all transferred into building up the Pure Land.

8

I work in this world in company with all Buddhas,

I work in this world in company with all Bodhisattvas;

Protected by Oya-sama I am here;

I know many who have preceded me along this path.

I am sporting in the midst of the Namu-amida-butsu.

How happy I am with the favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

To see Saichi work in the company of Buddhas and Bodhisat¬
tvas who fill up the whole universe 3 must be a most wondcr-

* Saichi hai this:

What a miracle!

The "Namu-amida-butsu" fills the whole world!

NOTES ON “NAMU-AMIDA-BUTSU” 165

fully inspiring sight. A scene transferred from the Pure Land!
Compared with this, Eckhart appears to be still harboring
something of this-worldliness. In Saichi all things come out
of the mystery of the “Namu-amida-butsu” in which there is
no distinction between “rapturous moments” and “love for
one’s neighbors.”

There is another aspect in Saichi’s life which makes him
come close to that of a Zen-man. For he sometimes rises above
the “Namu-amida-butsu,” above the oneness of the ki and ho,
above the ambivalence of wretchedness and gratefulness, of
misery and joy. He is "indifferent,” “nonchalant,” "de¬
tached,” or “disinterested” as if he came directly out of his
“is-ness” in all nakedness, in the “sono-mama-ncss” of things.

9

Perfectly indifferent I am!

No joy, no gratefulness!

Yet no grief over the absence of gratefulness.

10

“O Saichi, such as you are,

Are you grateful to Amida?”

“No particular feelings I have,

However much I listen [to the sermons];

And this for no reason.”

At all events, Saichi was one of the deepest Shin followers,
one who really experienced the mystery of the oneness of the
ki and ho as symbolized in the “Namu-amida-butsu.” He

And this world is given me by Oya-sama!
This is my joy!

"Namu-amida-butsu!"

1 66 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

lived il every moment of his life, beyond all logical absurdities
and semantic impossibilities.

11

O Saichi, 4 I am the most fortunate person!

I am altogether free from woes of all kind,

Not at all troubled with anything of the world.
Nor do I even recite the “Namu-amida-butsu”!
I’m saved by your mercifulness [O Amida-san!]
How pleased I feel for your favor!
"Namu-amida-butsu!”

12

While walking along the mountain path, how I enjoy smoking!
I sit by the roadside for awhile, I take out the pipe in peace and
with no trouble beclouding the mind.

But let us go home now, we have been out long enough, let us
go home now.

How light my steps arc as they move homeway!

My thoughts are filled with a return trip to Amida's country.
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!"

* Saichi often begins his utterances with the self-addressing "O Saichi"
and after a while forgets the way he started. "You" and “I" thus become
confused. Here the grammatical niceties arc disregarded.

Rennyo’s Letters

“THE LETTERS” arc those written by Rennyo Shonin
(1415-1499) to his followers. He was one of the greatest
teachers of the Shin school of Buddhism; in fact it was he
who laid the firm foundation for the modern religious institu¬
tion known as the Jodo-Shin Shu, the True Sect of the Pure
Land. His letters numbering about eighty-five arc preserved
and the title Gobunsho or Ofumi, that is, “honorable letters,”
is given to them. They arc generally read before a sermon and
quoted as the most authoritative source-documents on the
teaching of the Shin school. Saichi states here that when his
mind is illumined by these epistles he realizes what a miserable
creature he Is; but when he sees the Buddha-mind as revealed
through these illuminating documents of the great teacher, he
is assured of the overwhelming immensity of Oya-sama’s love
for him and feels grateful for it without measure. Rennyo’s
letters serve to bring out both aspects of our religious con¬
sciousness: (1) the sense of wickedness and depravity and
(2) the feeling of gratitude for being saved from an utterly
helpless situation. Here is one of Rennyo’s letters:

To be established in [Shin] faith means to understand the

167

1 68 mysticism: Christian and Buddhist

Eighteenth Vow. 1 To understand the Eighteenth Vow means to
tip in you.

Therefore, when you attain a state of single-mindedness as
you utter the " Namu ” 2 with absolute trust [in Amida] you per¬
ceive the significance of Amida’s Vow which is directed towards
awakening a faith-frame in you. For herein we realize what is
meant by Amida Nyorai’s “turning towards” s us ignorant be¬
ings. This is pointed out in the Larger Sutra of Eternal Life *
where we read: “Amida provides all beings with all the merits.” 1 * *

Thus it follows that with all the evil deeds, with all the evil
passions we have been cherishing in our former lives ever since
the bcginninglcss past, we are, owing to Amida's Vow which is
beyond comprehension, thoroughly cleansed of them with no
residue whatever left; and in consequence of it, we arc made to
abide with no fear of regression in “the order of steadfastness.” 6 * 8

1 "If upon my obtaining Buddahood, all being* in the ten quarters
should not desire in sincerity and trustfulness to be in my country, and
if they should not be bom there by only thinking of me, say, up to ten
times . . . may I not attain the Highest Enlightenment."
understand the frame of mind 2 the “Namu-amida-butsu” sets

1 As was explained, the Nembutiu which consists of the six syllables.
Na~mu-a-mi-da-buts(u), is a miraculous formula. When this is pro¬
nounced in sincerity of heart and in absolute faith in Amida. it produces
a certain state of consciousness which is termed here "frame of mind” or
"faith-frame." When it is attained, the devotee is said to have joined
“the group of steadfastness" with no fear of retrogression. The faith thus
awakened assures one of birth in the Pure Land.

3 The miracle of Shin faith is that when the ordinary-minded people

are confirmed in their faith all their sins and evil passions arc transferred

to Amida, and it is then he and not the actual sinners that would bear

all the dire karma-consequences. More than that, all the merits Amida
has accumulated during his infinite lives of self-training are given freely
to the devotee. This is technically known as the doctrine of transfer¬
ence (parinimena).

* This is the principal Mah&ydtia Siitra on which Shin teachings arc
based. But the Shin text is Sanghavarman’s Chinese translation executed
in 252 a.d., when he came to China from Central Asia.

8 This “transference of merit" has a deep metaphysical significance in
the history of Buddhist thought in India and China.

c The "order of steadfastness” is a stage where Shin devotees become

RENNYO’s LETTERS 1 69

This is what is meant by the statement that Nirvana is attain-
able without destroying the evil passions ( klesa). 7

This is the teaching exclusively taken up by our school but
you arc warned not to talk this way to people of other schools.
Let me remind you of this.

With reverence . . .

The translation of such documents as Rcnnyo’s letters is full
of difficulties as they arc so laden with technical terms which
defy in many cases replacement by any other languages. The
terms require lengthy explanations, which I have to omit. But
a word about the "Namu-amida-butsu.”

"Namu-amida-butsu" is the Japanese reading of the orig¬
inal Sanskrit phrase “namo amitabhabuddhaya," meaning
“Adoration of the Buddha of Infinite Light.” But with fol¬
lowers of the Pure Land teaching, the phrase is far more than
mere adoration for Amitabhabuddha, or Amida, for by this
they express their absolute faith in Amida as one who makes
it possible for them to be horn in his Land of Purity and Bliss.

With popular minds “Namu-amida-butsu" is rather a con¬
fused notion, for as in the case of Saichi the phrase frequently
represents Reality itself impersonated as Amida or Oya-sama,
and at the same time it is a form of adoration as well as the
expression of absolute dependence. This is not, however, all
of “Namu-amida-butsu,” for the phrase often serves as a
metaphysical formula symbolizing the identity of subject and
object, of the devotee and Amida, of the “sin-laden” indi-

absolulcly Jure of their rebirth in the Pure Land, that is to say, when
they sec as Saichi docs all the doors removed which keep this world in
separation from the Pure Land.

7 NirvSna is kleia (bonno) and klesa is Nirvana —this is one of the
groat Mahuyina teachings. When however its import is not properly
comprehended, it lends itself to all kinds of dangerous misinterpretation
for which mysticism is usually blamed. Eckhart for this reason was cen¬
sored as a heretic.

170 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

vidual and ihc all-saving and all-mcrciful Ova-sama, of all
beings (sarvasaltva) and Buddha, of ki and ho, of human
yearnings and the supreme enlightenment. In this sense, the
phrase, “Namu-amida-butsu,” stands for a state of conscious¬
ness in which Saichi finds it sometimes difficult to distinguish
himself from Amida.

13

The Oya-sama who never fails me
Has now become myself,

Making me hear his Name—

The “Namu-amida-butsu."

14

I am a fortunate one:

Oya-sama is given me,

The Oya who turns me into a Buddha—
“Namu-amida-butsu!"

When the phrase is used as a philosophical symbol, it is
usually divided first into two parts: “Namu" (ki) and
“Amida-butsu" (ho). "Namu" then stands for the devotee
filled with all possible sinfulness while “Amida-butsu" is the
Buddha of infinite light and eternal life. When the devotee
pronounces the phrase, “Namu-amida-butsu," he is the
“Namu-amida-butsu” itself. When Saichi repeats “Namu-
amida-butsu,” “Namu-amida-butsu,” the phrase is to be un¬
derstood in this sense, and no idea of supplication or mere
adoration is implied here. Saichi in this case may be said to
be like Tennyson calling himself “Alfred,” “Alfred” as he tells
us in his “Ancient Sage.” Saichi here is completely drunk with
the identification, completely absorbed in the mystery, through
which the miserable Saichi carrying all his human passions

RENNYO’S LETTERS iyi

and cravings finds himself transformed into a Buddha and in
the presence of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and other holy
souls. In a state of ecstasy or intoxication, Saichi does not
know where to stop when he jots down in his schoolboy’s note¬
book all that goes through his mind while busying himself
with making the footgear. Saichi's repetition of “Namu-amida-
butsu” is to be interpreted in this way.

Saichi often addresses himself, asking such questions as:
“What arc you doing now, O Saichi?” “How arc you faring,
O Saichi?” “Say, Saichi, where arc you?” “Why don’t you
stop writing?" and so on. These questions evidently show that
his was a dual personality: the “miserable, despicable, woe¬
begone" Saichi was living together with Amida or Oya-sama
when Amida was felt to be near. Sometimes Saichi felt that
it was not he who addressed Amida or himself but Amida
addressing Amida. Amida’s presence in Saichi was not a
visionary experience. Amida really directed Saichi’s move¬
ments while this by no means prevented Saichi from being
himself, from being a miserable existence incalculably sepa¬
rated from Amida. But Saichi felt at the same moment that
without this miserable existence of his he could not experience
all the joy that came from unity.*

The psychologists may declare Saichi to be a very good ex-

* Meistcr Eckhart, a* quoted by Paul Tillich in his paper on “The
Types of Philosophy of Religion," says: “There is between God and the
soul neither strangeness nor remoteness, therefore the soul is not only
equal with God but it is—the same that He is." To Saichi, Amida is
both remote and near, perhaps to him Amida is near because of his re¬
moteness. he is remote because of his nearness. To use Saichi's own
words: "Saichi feels miserable because he is full of evil cravings, but it
is just because of his misery that he is made to apprecitae the loving¬
kindness of Amida who is no other than his Oya-sama and that the joy
and the feeling of gratitude following the appreciation know no bounds,
even going beyond the limits of (he whole universe."

172 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

ample of schizophrenia. But they forget that Saichi is not a
sick person, not a ease of psychosis, tormented by the split.
He is a perfectly healthy personality, he has never lost the
sense of the oneness of his being. In fact his sense of being is
so deep and yet so definite that he is living a more real and
meaningful life than most of us do. It is we and not he who
live in a psychological duality with all its disturbing conse¬
quences.

Eckhart once gave a sermon on “the just lives in eternity”
in which he says:

The just lives in God and God in him, for God is born in the
just and the just in God: at every virtue of the just God is born
and is rejoiced, and not only every virtue but every action of the
just wrought out of the virtue of the just and in justice; thereat
God is glad aye, thrilled with joy, there is nothing in his ground
that docs not dance for joy. To unenlightened ( grob ) people
this is matter for belief but the illumined know.*

It is illuminating to hear Eckhart say that “to the coarse-
minded (grob) people this is matter for belief but the en¬
lightened know (wissen)." “The coarse-minded” means those
who cannot go beyond the senses and the intellect, for they
do not know anything that takes place in the realm of
pre/na-intuition. The Oya-sama whose all-embracing and all-
comprehending love makes Saichi hear his Name, “Namu-
amida-butsu,” first becomes Saichi himself. This means that
the Oya-sama individualizes himself as a Saichi in the same
way as Eckhart would have God “be born in the just and the
just in God” and then hears his own Name pronounced by
his individualized human Saichi. Amida is now transformed

• Evans, p. 149 .

RENNYO’S LETTERS 173

into the “Namu-amida-butsu” in the being of Saichi and
Saichi in turn becomes Amida by hearing Amida’s Name,
“Namu-amida-butsu” as pronounced by Saichi himself. In
this unity it is difficult to distinguish who is Amida and who
is Saichi. When the one is mentioned the other inevitably
comes along. Amida’s Pure Land cannot now be anything else
but Saichi’s sahaloka —this shaba world of particular exist¬
ences.

15

Oya is in the Pure Land,

I am in this world.

And Oya has given me,

To become one with me:

The “Namu-amida-butsu”!

16

Let me go to the Pure Land,

Which is like visiting my neighbors—
This world is the Pure Land.
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

17

You are not saying the Nembutsu,

It is the Nembutsu that makes you say it.
And you are taken to the Pure Land.
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

From Saichi’s Journals

THE FOLLOWING arc translations in English of sonic of
Saichi’s utterances. .4s I have said before, there arc several
thousands of such items in his journals, and there is no doubt
that they are good material for students of religious experi¬
ences. My attempt here is, however poor the translations, to
afford the reader a glimpse into Saichi’s inner life. Unless one
has a thorough mastery of both languages, Japanese and
English, it is impossible to convey to the English reader the
deep underlying feelings characterizing Saichi as one of the
most conspicuously myukonin type of Shin followers.

The following selections, numbering 148, arc grouped under
nine headings. The classification is not at all scientific, since it
is often very difficult to classify certain expressions under a
certain definite group because they include various ideas in¬
terrelated to one another. The nine arc as follows:

1 .

2 .

3.

4.

5.

Nyorai and Saichi 6. The Free Gift

Oya-sama 7. The Heart-searchings

The Nembutsu 8. Poverty

The Ki and the Ho 9. The Inner Life

The Pure Land, This World and Hell

FROM SAICHl’S JOURNALS

175

1. NYORAI 1 * AND SAICHI *

I

I exchange work with Amida:

I worship him who in turn deigns to worship me—
This is the way I exchange work with him. 3

2

"O Saichi, who is Nyorai-san?”

“He is no other than myself.”

"Who is the founder [of the Shin teaching]?'*

"He is no other than myself.”

"What is the canonical text?”

"It is no other than myself.”

The ordinary man’s heart has no fixed root,

Yet this rootless one takes delight in the Ho [i.e., Dharma ];
This is because he is given Oya’s heart—

The heart of "Namu-amida-butsu.”

* Nyorai is the Japanese reading for Chinese ju-lai, which is the trans¬
lation of the Sanskrit tath&gata. It means “one who thus comes (or
goes).”

* Cf. Angelas Silesius, German mystic-poet:

I know that without me
God can no moment live;

Were I to die, then He
No longer could survive.

I am as great as God,

And He is small like me;

He cannot be above,

Nor I below Him be.

3 The Japanese for “worship" is ogamu, which literally means ‘ to bow
to an object reverentially and devotionally.” “Worship" may sound too
strong, but if it is understood in the sense of “religious reverence and
homage" as it is ordinarily done, there is no harm in the use of the term.

176 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

3

I am lying,

Amida deigns to worship Saichi,

I too in turn worship Amida—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

4

The adorable form of Nyorai
Is indeed this wretched self's form—
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!” 4

5

Buddha is worshiped by [another] Buddha:

The Namu is worshiped by Amida,

Amida is worshiped by the Namu:

This is the meaning of kimyo 5
As expressed in the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

6

Amida calling on Amida—

This voice—

“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

7

Saichi exchanges work with Amida:

When he worships Amida,

* Dreamed on the night of May 22. ..... , .. .

»Kimyo is the Japanese for namu, meaning "taking refuge, adora¬
tion," “worshiping," etc. The author here probably intends to mean that
mutual worshiping of Namu and Amida is the meaning of "Namu-amida-
butsu,” or that "Namu-amida-butsu" symbolizes the oneness of Amida
and every one of us.

1 77

FROM SAICHl’S JOURNALS

Amida in turn deigns to worship him [Saichi]—
This is the way we exchange our work.

How happy I am with the favor!
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

8

When I worship thee, O Buddha,

This is Buddha worshiping [another] Buddha,
And it is thou who makest this fact known to
me, O Buddha:

For this favor Saichi is most grateful.

9

What all the Buddhas of the Hokkai 8 declare
Is to make this Saichi turn into a Buddha—
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

10

My joy!

How beyond thought!

Self and Amida and the “Namu-amida-butsu.”
ix

How fine!

The whole world and vastness of space is Buddha!

And I am in it—“Namu-amida-butsu!”

8 Hokkai is dharmadhdtu in Sanskrit, meaning the universe as the
totality of all things.

mysticism: Christian and buddhist

2. OYA-SAMA 1
12

Oya-sama is Buddha

Who transforms Saichi into a Buddha—

How happy with the favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

*3

My heart and Oya-sama—

We have just one heart
Of “Namu-amida-butsu.”

14

I am a happy man,

A glad heart is given me;

Amida’s gladness is my gladness—
"Namu-amida-butsu!”

»5

The heart that thinks [of Buddha]

Is Buddha’s heart,

A Buddha given by Buddha—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

16

How grateful I am!

Into my heart has Oya-sama entered and fully
occupies it.

The cloud of doubt all dispersed,

r Oya haa no English equivalent. It is both motherhood and father¬
hood, not in their biological sense but as the symbol of loving-lundness.
Sama, an honorific particle, is sometimes shortened to son which is less
formal and more friendly and intimate.

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS

I am now made to turn westward.

How fortunate I am!

Saying “Namu-amida-butsu” I return west.

*7

Are devils 8 come?

Arc serpents come?

I know not.

I live my life embraced in the arms of Oya-sama,
I am fed with the milk of “Namu-amida-bulsu,”
Looking at Oya-sama’s face.

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

x8

When he is known as Oya,
Worship him as such:

Oya and I are one—

The oneness of ki and ho
In the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

*9

Amida is my Oya-sama,

I am child of Amida;

Let me rejoice in Oya-sama, in “Namu-amida-butsu.
The “Namu-amida-butsu” belongs to child as well
as to Oya-sama:

By this is known the mutual relationship [between
Thee and me].

179

8 Oni in Japanese, evil spirits under the King of Death (yimarija).

180 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

20

My heart and thy heart—
The oneness of hearts—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

21

How lucky I am!

Oya is given me!

Oya who turns me into a Buddha is
The “Namu-amida-butsu !**

22

The Hokkai is my Oya—
Being my Oya—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

23

Oya and child—

Between them not a shadow of doubt: *
This is my joy!

24

The Namu and Amida,

Oya and child,

They quarrel: the Namu on one side and Amida on
the other side.

Repentance and joyfulncss—

How intimate!

# Meaning absolute trust between Amida as Oya-sama and Saichi as
child.

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS l8l

25

What is Saichi’s understanding of the “Namu-amida-butsu”?
Yes, I am an adopted child of “Namu-amida-butsu.”

How do you understand a life of gratitude?

As to being grateful, sometimes I remember it, sometimes
I do not.

Really, a wretched man I am!

26

Namu-san 10 and Amida-san arc talking:

This is the “Namu-amida-butsu” of Oya and son.

27

Namu-san and Amida-san—both are Amida:
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

This happiness is my happiness.

28

“Namu-amida-butsu!”—how grateful I am!
“Namu-amida-butsu” is the oneness of the worldly and
the highest truth.

“Namu-amida-butsu!”—how happy I am for the favor!
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

Wherefrom is “Namu-amida-butsu”?

It is the mercy issuing from Oya’s bosom;

How happy I am with the favor, “Namu-amida-butsu!”
“Wherefor is Saichi bound?”

4 “Saichi will go to the Land of Bliss.”

“With whom?”

“With Oya-sama I go—how happy I am!”
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

10 This is Saichi himself. Namu is personified here.

182 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

3. the nembutsu”

29

“O Saichi, do you recite the Nembutsu only when
you think of it?

What do you do when you do not think of it?”

“Yes, [well,] when I do not think of it, there is
The ‘Namu-amida-butsu’ [just the same]—

The oneness of ki and ho;

Even my thinking of [the Nembutsu ] rises out of it.
How thankful I am for the favor!"
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!"

30

Honen Shonin [is said to have recited the Nembutsu]
sixty thousand times [a day];

With Saichi it is only now and then.
Sixty-thousand-times and now-and-then—

They arc one thing.

How grateful I am for the favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

31

“O Nyorai-san, do you take me—this wretched one such as
I am?

Surely because of the presence of such wretched ones as you,
Oya-sama’s mercy is needed—

11 The Nembutsu (literally "thinking of Buddha") and the My&gd
("name”) are often interchangeable. Both refer to the six syllables:
"Na-mu-a-mi-da-buli(u)." The syllable* serve three purposes: ( 1 ) aa
the MyOgO itself, (2) as an actual invocation, and ( 3 ) as the symbol of
identity.

18 3

FROM SA1CHTS JOURNALS

The Name is just meant for you, O Saichi,
And it is yours.”

“That is so, I am really grateful,

I am grateful for the favor—
Namu-amida-butsu!”

32

All the miraculous merits accumulated by Amida
Throughout his disciplinary life of innumerable eons
Arc filling up this body called Saichi.

Merits arc no other than the six syllables "Na-mu-a-mi-da-
buts(u)”

33

The “Namu-amida-butsu” is inexhaustible,

However much one recites it, it is inexhaustible;

Saichi’s heart is inexhaustible;

Oya’s heart is inexhaustible.

Oya's heart and Saichi’s heart,

Ki and ho, arc of one body which is the “Namu-amida-butsu.”
However much this is recited, it is inexhaustible.

34

To Saichi such as he is, something wonderful has happened—
That heart of his has turned into Buddhahood!

What an extraordinary event this!

What things beyond imagination are in store within the
"Namu-amida-butsu”!

184. mysticism: Christian and buddhist

35

The “Namu-amida-butsu”

Is like the sun-god,

Is like the world,

Is like the great earth,

Is like the ocean!

Whatever Saichi’s heart may be,

He is enveloped in the emptiness of space,

And the emptiness of space is enveloped in “Namu-amida-
butsu” !

O my friends, be pleased to hear the “Namu-amida-butsu”—
“Namu-amida-butsu” that will free you from Jigoku [hell].

36

The Nembutsu is like vastness of space,

The vastness of space is illumined by Oya-sama’s Nembutsu.
My heart is illumined by Oya-sama.

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

37

For what reason it is I do not know,

But the fact is the “Namu-amida-butsu” has come upon me.

38

How wretched! What shall I do?

[But] wretchedness is the “Namu-amida-butsu”—
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS 185

39

There is nothing in the Hokkai;

Only one there is.

Which is the “Namu-amida-butsu”—

And this is Saichi’s property.

4°

The “Namu-amida-butsu” is transformed and I am it,
And it delights in me,

And I am delighted in it.

4«

How wretched!

And how joyous!

They are one

[In] the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

42

The Nembutsu of repentance over my wretchedness,

The Nembutsu of joy—

The “Namu-amida-butsu.”

43

I may be in possession of 84,000 evil passions,

And Amida too is 84,000—

This is the meaning of oneness of “Namu-amida-butsu.”

44

The Namu is myself,

Amida is the Namu;

And both Namu and Amida arc the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

a

i86 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

45

I, bound for death,
Am now made into

the immortal “Namu-amida-butsu.”

46

Life’s ending means not-dying;

Not-dying is life’s ending;

Life’s ending is to become “Namu-amida-butsu.

Death has been snatched away from me.

And in its place the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

48

Saichi’s heart destined for death when his end comes,
Is now made an immortal heart,

Is made into the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

49

To die—nothing is better than death;

One feels so relieved!

Nothing exceeds this feeling of relief.

“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

FROM SAICHl'S JOURNALS

.87

4 . THE KI AND THE HO ,S

50

“O Saichi, let me have what your understanding is.”
“Yes, yes, I will:

How miserable, how miserable!

Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

“Is that all, O Saichi?

It will never do.”

“Yes, yes, it will do, it will do.

According to Saichi's understanding,

Ki and ho arc one:

The ‘Namu-amida-butsu’ is no other than he himself.
This is indeed Saichi’s understanding:

He has flowers in both hands,

Taken away in one way and given as gift in another way.”

How happy I am for this favor! “Namu-amida-butsu!”
Now I know where to deposit all my amassed delusions:

It is where the ki and the ho are one—

The “Namu-amida-butsu.”

52

Such a Buddha! he is really a good Buddha!

He follows me wherever I go,

He takes hold of my heart.

The saving voice of the six syllables

ia The following equation* hold: the Ki = Jiriki (“self-power 1 ') = the
Namu — the supplicating individual = the sinner = Saichi. The =
Amida = Buddha = Enlightenment = Tariki (“other-power”) = Reality
= the Dharma = Oya-sama = Tathigata.

1 88 mysticism: Christian and buddhist
Is heard as the oneness of the ki and the ho—

As the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

I have altogether no words for this;

How sweet the mercy!

53 . . ..

No clinging to anything ( kata-giru ja nai ):

No clinging to the ki,

No clinging to the ho —

This is in accord with the Law {okite m kano).

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

This on the part of the ki,

This on the part of the ho.

How grateful I am!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

54

How wretched!

What is it that makes up my heart?

It is no other than my own filled with infinitude of gu.lt,
Into which the two syllables na-mu have come,

And by these syllables infinitude of guilt is borne,

It is Amida who bears infinitude of guilt.

The oneness of the ki and the ho—

“Namu-amida-butsu 1”

55

Saichi’s Nyorai-san,

Where is he?

Saichi’s Nyorai-san is no other than the oneness of the
ki and the ho.

How grateful I am! “Namu-amida-butsu!”
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS 1 89

56

O Saichi, if you wish to sec Buddha,

Look within your own heart where the ki and the hd are one
As the “Namu-amida-butsu”—

This is Saichi’s Oya-sama.

How happy with the favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

57

If the Namu is myself, Amida is myself too:

This is the “Namu-amida-butsu” of six syllables. 11

. 58

The Namu is worshiped by Amida,

And Amida is worshiped by the Namu —

This is the “Namu-amida-butsu” of six syllables.

59

This Saichi is thine,

Thou art mine—

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

60

As to Saichi’s own Nyorai-san,

Where is he?

Yes, Saichi’s Nyorai-san is the oneness of the ki and the ho.
How grateful I am!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

18 Saichi generally declares Namu to be himself and Amida to be
Oya-sama. To identify himself with both Namu and Amida is unusual.
We may however remark that Saichi often equates himself with "Namu-
amida-butsu,” which means that he is Amida as well as Namu.

mysticism: Christian and buddhist
6i

“O Saichi, what arc you saying to Oya-sama?”
“I am saying, ‘Amida-bu, Amida-bu’.”

“What is Oya-sama saying?”

“He is saying, ‘O Namu, O Namu , . ,>

Thus Thou to me, and I to Thee:

This is the oneness of the ki and the ho.
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

62

“O Saichi, how do you see ‘thee’?'’

“To see ‘thee’ [take] Amida’s mirror,

Therein revealed arc both ki and ho.

Beyond that—repentance and joy.

How wonderful, how wonderful!

Grateful indeed I am! Namu-amida-butsu!”

63

How wretched!—

This comes out spontaneously.

How grateful for Buddha’s favor!—

This too spontaneously.

The ki and the ho, both arc Oya’s working.

64

All comes out in perfection.

How grateful for the favor!

And I take no part in it.

How grateful for the favor!
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS

*91

5. THE PURE LAND, THIS WORLD AND HELL 14

6 5

“O Saichi, what is your pleasure?”

“My pleasure is this world of delusion;

Because it turns into the seed of delight in the Dharma ( ho ).”
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!"

66

This world ( sahaloka ) and the Pure Land—they are one;
Worlds as numberless as atoms, too, arc mine.
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

67

The path to be born into the Land of Bliss
From this world, there is no other, after all,

Than this world itself.

This world is Namu-amida-butsu
Just as much as the Land of Bliss is.

How grateful, how grateful I am!

This Saichi’s eye 15 is the boundary line
[Between this world and the Land of Bliss].
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

14 Jigoku is hell generally, Gokuraku is the Land of Bliss, J6do is the
Pure Land, and shaba is “this world” or sahalokadhatu in Sanskrit.

11 This does not necessarily mean that when the eyes are closed which
symbolize death we are in the Pure Land and that while they are kept
open we are in this world. Saichi’s idea probably is metaphysical or
dialectical, though of course this is not to say that Saichi has reasoned
out all these things consciously after the fashion of a philosopher. Saichi’s
allusion to the eye reminds us of Eckhart’s remark on it.

192 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

68

Where arc you sleeping, O Saichi?

I am sleeping in this world’s Pure Land;

When awakened I go to Amida’s Pure Land.

69

This is shaba (Sanskrit: sahaloka),

And my heart is bom of Jigoku (Sanskrit: naraka).

70

“O Saichi, when you die, who will be your companion to the
Land of Bliss?”

“As to me, Emma-san will be my companion.”

“O Saichi, you tell us such tales again.

Who has ever gone to the Land of Bliss with Emma-san as
companion?

O Saichi, you’d better not tell us such nonsense any more.”
“In spite of your remark, I say you are mistaken;

Have you not read this in the ‘Songs’?

•Emma, Great Lord of Justice, respects us; together with lords
of the five paths, he stands as guardian day and night.’
You too should rejoice in the company of Emma-sama—

Here is Namu-amida-butsu.

This world, how enjoyable with Emma-sama!

This Saichi too is guarded by Emma-sama,

This Saichi and Emma-sama both are one Namu-amida-butsu:
This is my joy!”

“O Saichi, from whom did you get such a joyous note?”
“Yes, I talked with Emma-sama himself who granted this
to me—

FROM SAICHl'S JOURNALS

[He says] ‘You are welcome indeed.’

How joyful! how joyful!

Namu-amida-butsu! Namu-amida-butsu!”

7 *

I’m fortunate indeed!

Not dead I go,

Just as I live,

I go to the Pure Land!
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

72

Led by “Namu-amida-butsu,”
While living in this world,

I go to “Namu-amida-butsu.”

73

I’m fortunate indeed!

Not dead I go,

Just as I live,

I go to the Pure Land!
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

74

I am poor and immensely happy at that
Amida’s Pure Land I enjoy while here—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

194 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

75

If the shaba world is different from the Pure Land,

I should never have heard the Dharma:

Myself and this shaba world and the Pure Land and Amida
All is one “Namu-amida-butsu.”

76

This shaba world too is yours,

Where Saichi’s rebirth is confirmed—

This is your waiting teahouse.

77

This shaba turned into the Pure Land,

And myself changing!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

7 8

My joy is that while in this world of shaba
I have been given the Pure Land—
“Namu-amida-butsu !”

79

My birthplace? I am bom of Jigoku (hell);

I am a nobody’s dog
Carrying the tail between the legs;

I pass this world of woes,

Saying “Namu-amida-butsu.”

80

How happy I am! “Namu-amida-butsu!"

I am the Land of Bliss;

I am Oya-sama.

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

*95

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS

81

Shining in glory is Amida’s Pure Land,
And this is my Pure Land—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

82

Heard so much of the Happy Land,

But after all it is not so much [as I expected];
It is good that it is not, indeed,

How at home do I feel with it!
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

83

The Land of Bliss is mine.

Just take “Namu-amida-butsu” as you hear it!

84

How grateful!

While others die,

I do not die:

Not dying, I go
To Amida’s Pure Land.

85

Has Saichi ever seen the Land of Bliss?

No, Saichi has never seen it before.

That is good—

The first visit this.

196 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

86

How grateful I am!

I live without knowing anything—

Is this living in a natural Pure Land?

87

How grateful I am!

Into my heart has Oya-sama entered!

The cloud of doubt is all dispersed,

I am now given to turn westward.

How fortunate I am!

Saying “Namu-amida-butsu,” I turn west.

88

Buddha-wisdom is beyond human thought,
It makes me go to the Pure Land.
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

89

How dreadful!

This world known as shaba

Is where we endlessly commit all kinds of karma.

How thankful!

All this is turned into [the work of] the Pure Lund,
Unintermittcntly!

90

The most wonderful thing is

That Buddha’s invisible heart of compassion is visible
While I’m right here;

197

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS

That the Pure Land, millions of millions of worlds away,
is visible

While I’m right here—

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

91

I am not to go to Jigoku (hell),

Jigoku is right here,

We arc living right in Jigoku,

Jigoku is no other place than this.

92

The Hokkai is never filled
However much we may talk of it—

Which is the Land of Bliss.
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

93

The Hokkai is Saichi’s own country—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

94

There is a man going back to Amida’s Pure Land—
The Namu is carried by Amida.

The Pure Land where he returns
Is the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

95

The being reborn means this present moment;

By means of the “Namu-amida-butsu” this is attained;
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

198 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

6. the free gift

96

Let this world go as it docs,

Ignorance-debts, all paid up by Nyorai-san—
How happy, how happy I am!

97

Whatever we might say, it is all from thy side,

Yes, it is all from thee.

How thankful I am indeed, how happy I am indeed!
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

98

The “Namu-amida-butsu” is as great as the world itself;

All the air is the “Namu-amida-butsu”;

My heart is also a big heart,

My tsumi is filling the world.

However bad Saichi may be, he cannot defeat you, [O
Buddha];

My tsumi is dragged along by you,

And it is now taken up [by you] to the Pure Land—

This favor of yours, this favor of yours!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

ie The gift or favor coming from Amida is a free one, for he never
asks anything in exchange or in compensation. When the sinner (ki)
uttera "Namu-amida-butsu” in all sincerity he is at once made conscious
of his being from the first with Amida and in Amida. There has never
been any sort of alienation or estrangement between Amida and sinner.
It was all due to the latter’s illusive ideas cherished about himself. When
they are wiped away, he realizes that the sun has always been there and
finas himself basking in its light of infinity.

*99

FROM SAICHl’S JOURNALS

99

The treasure of the six syllables was given me by Oya-sama:
However much one spends of it, it is never exhausted.

The treasure grows all the more as it is used;

It is the most wondrous treasure,

And I am the recipient of the good thing.

How happy I am with the favor! “Namu-amida-butsu!”

xoo

"O Saichi, you say ‘I am given, I am given’

And what is it that is given you?”

“Yes, yes, I am given, I am given the Name of Amida!

And this for nothing!

Saichi is thereby set at ease.

To be set at ease means that the ki is altogether possessed
[by Oya-sama].

It is indeed Oya-sama who has taken full possession of me,
And this Oya-sama of mine is the ‘Namu-amida-butsu.’ ”

101

Saichi has his heart revealed by Amida’s mirror,

How happy for the favor! “Namu-amida-butsu!”
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

102

What a miracle! The “Namu-amida-butsu” fills up the whole
world,

And this world is given to me by Oya-sama.

This is my happiness. “Namu-amida-butsu!”

200 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

103

O Nyorai-san,

You have given up yourself to me,

And my heart has been made captive by you—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

104

How miserable!

Saichi’s heart, how miserable!

All kinds of delusion thickly arise all at once!

A hateful fire mixed with evils is burning,

The waves mixed with evils arc rising,

How miserable! A fire mixed with follies is burning.

This heretic, how miserable!

Cannot you call a halt?

Saichi’s heart, worrying,

A heart in utter confusion,

Saichi’s heart rising as high as the sky!

Here comes the wise man giving the warning:

“O Saichi, listen, now is the time!”

How grateful!

“Now that Amida’s ‘Original Vow’ is established as
‘Namu-amida-butsu,’

You have no more to worry about yourself,

Listen, listen!

When you hear ‘Namu-amida-butsu,’

You have your rebirth in the Pure Land.

The ‘Namu-amida-butsu’ is yours.”

201

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS

How happy I am for this favor! “Namu-amida-butsu!”

Now I know where to deposit all my amassed delusions:

It is where the ki and ho are one—

The “Namu-amida-butsu.”

With this heart [thus identified],

All over the worlds as many as atoms,

I roam playing in company with all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Eating the “Namu-amida-butsu,” this heart passes its time
In happy company with the "Namu-amida-butsu.”

How happy with this favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

105

O you, my friends, looking at your hearts filled with wretched¬
ness,

Be not led to doubt Amida’s mercy,

Though there is indeed this possibility.

But this is the greatest mistake you are apt to commit.

An utter wretchedness we all guilty beings experience
Docs surely turn into a priceless treasure—

This you will realize when karma ripens;

For the “Namu-amida-butsu” truly achieves wonders.

That the “Namu-amida-butsu” truly achieves wonders is this:
The oceans, mountains, eatables, waters, wood used for our
house-building, and all other things handled by us guilty
beings:

202 MYSTICISM: CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST

They arc one and all transformations of the “Namu-amida-
butsu.”

O my friends, be pleased to take note of this truth,

For this is all due to Oya-sama’s mercy.

How grateful I feel for all this!

“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

106

How grateful!

When I think of it, all is by his [Amida’s] grace.

O Saichi, what do you mean by it?

Ah, yes, his grace is real fact.

This Saichi was made by his grace;

The dress I wear was made by his grace;

The food I cat was made by his grace;

The footgear I put on was made by his grace;

Every other thing we have in this world was all made by his
grace,

Including the bowl and the chopsticks;

Even this workshop where I work was made by his grace:
There is really nothing that is not the “Namu-amida-butsu.”
How happy I am for all this!

"Namu-amida-butsu!”

107

By your favor I am turned into a Buddha;
Infinitely great is this favor of yours—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

203

FROM SAICHl’S JOURNALS
108

“Saichi’s illness, is it cured by swallowing the ‘Namu-amida-
butsu’?"

“O, no!"

“If so, how is it cured?"

“Yes, Saichi’s illness is cured when it is swallowed up by the
‘Namu-amida-bu-sama.’"

Saichi is now bodily swallowed up by the pill of the six syl¬
lables,

And within the six syllables he leads a life of gratitude.

His life of gratitude is indeed a mystery,

The mystery of mysteries this!

How happy I am with the favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

109

Saichi has something good given him,

The meditation of five Kalpas is given him.

Where can he have a fit place to store such a big thing?
The fact is that he is taken into it.

How grateful I am!

“Namu-amida-butsu!"

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

no

Saichi has something good given him,

The meditation of five Kalpas is given him.

Where can he have a fit place to store such a big thing?
The fact is that he is taken into it.

How grateful I am!

204 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

hi

“Namu-amida-butsu” is indeed a wonderful Name,

And I have it as gift.

It gushes out of Saichi’s heart;

This is as it ought to be:

The ki and ho arc one in the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

112

“O Saichi, tell us what kind of taste 17 is the taste of ‘Namu-
amida-butsu/

Tell us what kind of taste is the taste of ‘Namu-amida-butsu.’ ”
“The taste of the ‘Namu-amida-butsu’ is:

A joy filling up the bosom,

A joy filling up the liver,

Like the rolling swell of the sea—

No words—just the utterance: Oh, Oh!”

XI 3

There is one thing I wish to learn from Oya-sama:

How do you wipe out my guilts?

Carrying my guilts as they arc

[I am] borne up by the “Namu-amida-butsu”!

How grateful I am!

"Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

1T “Taste”—Bible reference: Imitation of Christ, Chapter XXXIV,
"To him who tasteth Thee, what can be distasteful? And to him who
tasteth Thee not, what is there which can make him joyous?”

205

FROM SAICHl'S JOURNALS

"4

The three poisonous passions arc in company with the
"Namu-amida-butsu,”

And found working with “Namu-amida-butsu”!

How thankful I am for the favor!
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

115

The love that inspired Oya-sama to go through
All the sufferings and all the hardships—

I thought I was simply to listen to the story,

But that was a grievous mistake, I find.

116

[What a wonder] that such a bad man as Saichi
whose badness knows no bounds
Has been transformed into a Buddha!

How grateful for the favor, and how happy!
"Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

117

How wretched I am!

For us ordinary people human calculations are of no avail.
As to the estimation of guilts—this is left to Oya-sama.
How grateful for the favor!

"Namu-amida-butsu!”

118

My heart given up to Thee,

And Thy heart received by me!

206 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

7. THE HEART-SEARCHINGS

”9

The bombu ,e cannot live with Buddha,
Because he has no humility and joy;
Lives with Buddha—
“Namu-amida-butsu !**

120

Saying “I cannot understand,”

They seize upon the bonno 20 and investigate;
But the bonno is the body of merit;

This makes me laugh.

121

If there were no wretchedness,

My life would be wickedness itself;

How fortunate I am that I was given wretchedness
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!”

i* While at the moment of exaltation Saichi feels he is Amid a himself
in company with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who fill the whole universe,
there are occasions when he feels the contrary. He then is the most
despicable creature, like a homeless dog with his tail between the legs.
He would cry: “How wretched, how worthless, how full of 81,000 evil
thoughts am I!" But he never remains long in this state of self-com-
miseration, for he soon rises from it triumphantly, praising Buddha s
infinite love for him. The psychologist may take him as a good example
of manic-depressive psychosis. But the trouble is that Saichi is very
much saner than most ordinary minds including scholars. He belongs to
the group of “steadfastness,” he has "something" occupying the very core
of his being as Eckhart would say. Students of the religious consciousness
know well that there is something of ambivalence in every devout soul.
In this respect Saichi’s utterances are of unusual importance.

i® Bombu is the unenlightened and stands in contrast to Buddha.

™ KUia in Sanskrit, generally rendered '“evil passions." They arc the
product of ignorance ( avidyd) and thirst (trisna).

207

FROM SAlCHl’S JOURNALS
122

When the bombu is not understood
It is wickedness;

When understood, it is humility—
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

123

Saichi feels within himself
An endless flow of folly,

An endless flow of greed;

There is a fire constantly burning—

No wonder, this burning,

For Saichi is an evil spirit.

124

Saichi’s heart is all rain,

Saichi’s heart, like rain and rain, is all rain;

Saichi’s heart is all fog, like fog within a fog.

There is nothing but wretchedness in Saichi’s heart.

*25

“How wretched I am!”

This is what we all say when we feel humiliated.

But this kind of self-humiliation we say now is all a lie.

[The real one we say is] what we say after we’ve visited the
Pure Land.

This Saichi’s self-humiliation is nothing but a lie, monstrous
lie, a monstrous, monstrous lie!

And within this lie there is another lie well wrapped!

How shameful!

This “How shameful!’’ is also a lie bursting out of the mouth.

2 o 8 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

This Saichi putting on the mask is most irreverently playing
upon the saintly masters!

How wretched, how wretched!

There, there, that Saichi is again putting on the mask!

There is nothing in this Saichi but going around in disguise
and deceiving everybody;

How wretched!

Anything Saichi says is wretchedness itself.

Even this comes out of the lying lips.

The only real true thing is Oya-sama, no other there is!

All my lies have been completely taken away [by him],

[And there remains nothing but]

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

126

How did you see your own heart?

To see the heart, take Amida’s mirror.

How wretched!

The wretchedness of my heart is like space, it has no limits.
How wretched!

127

O Saichi, you are a wretched fellow!

Your stature is hardly five feet,

And yet your heart runs wildly all over the world.
Saichi is a wretched man.

How wretched!

128

They understand who have had sorrows,

But those who had them not can never understand:

FROM SAICHI’S JOURNALS 20g

There is nothing so excruciating as sighs—

The sighs that refuse to be disposed of.

But they are removed by Amida,

And all I can say now is “Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-
amida-butsu!”

129

There is no bottom to Saichi’s wickedness;

There is no bottom to Saichi’s goodness:

How happy I am with the favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

130

The wretched heart of contrition—

The thankful heart of joy—

The “Namu-amida-butsu” of contrition and joy ! 11

=1 Logically speaking, this is a case of identity in absolute contradic¬
tion. Saichi demonstrates this expericntially. When he is conscious of
his finiteness, being bound to the law of karmic causation, his heart is
filled with contrition. But as soon as he feels that it is because of this
consciousness that he has been taken up in the arms of Oya-sama, his
joy knows no limits. The "Namu-amida-butsu" symbolizes the unifica¬
tion or rather identification of utter wretchedness and elated joyfulness.

2 io mysticism: Christian and buddhist

8. poverty 22

I 3 I

Nothing is left to Saichi,

Except a joyful heart nothing is left to him.

Neither good nor bad has he, all is taken away from him;
Nothing is left to him!

To have nothing—how completely satisfying!

Everything has been carried away by the “Namu-amida-
butsu.”

He is thoroughly at home with himself:

This is indeed the “Namu-amida-butsu”!

132

My avarice has all been taken away,

And the world has turned into my “Namu-amida-butsu.”

*33

Everything of mine has been carried away by Thee,

And Thou hast given me the Nembutsu —“Namu-amida-
butsu.”

32 Poverty means that all that one thinks to be one’s own is taken or
earned away by Amida or Oya-sama, that the self-power (Jiriki) finds
itscll ot no avail whatever. More positively, it is a state of self-realization
that Amida is all in all.

FROM SAICHl’S JOURNALS

211

9. THE INNER LIFE 11

»34

To be grateful is all a lie,

The truth is—there is nothing the matter;

And beyond this there is no peace of mind—
“Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-
butsu!”

(With this peacefully I retire.)

135

There’s nothing with me, nothing’s the matter with me—
To have nothing the matter is the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

136

That this Saichi is turned into a Buddha,

Even while I knew nothing of it:

So I am told.

*37

How wretched!

Wretchedness too is of suchness. 2 *

How thankful!

Buddha’s favor too is of suchness.

Both ki and ho arc Oya-sama’s work . 11

The inner life is the life of suchness, of kono-mama, of the “noth¬
ing's the matter,” of the "I know not what," of the horse galloping on
the heath (Eckhart), of the flea in God's is-ness. . .

The original Japanese reads, “ onodzukara” which means ‘ as-it-is-
ness” “being natural,” "being perfect in itself,” or “being sufficient in
itself." This is kono-mama or sono-mama.

“ Hataraki in the original means "function," "action,” or “operation/

212 MYSTICISM: CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST

All out, nothing kept back! 70
How grateful for the favor!

Nothing’s left for me to do.

How grateful for the favor!

“Namu-amida-butsu!”

138

As regards myself, nothing is the matter:

Called by the voice the mind has been made captive,
And “Namu-amida-butsu!”

139

To say, “How grateful!’’ is a lie;

The truth is: there is nothing the matter with one;

And there is nothing more that makes one feel at home—
“Namu-amida-butsu! Namu-amida-butsu!”

140

O Saichi, such as you are, are you grateful?

Nothing’s the matter [with me],

However much I listen [to the sermons], nothing's the matter
with me.

And no inquiries arc to be made.

141

Nothing’s the matter, nothing’s the matter with me;

That there’s nothing the matter—this is the
“Namu-amida-butsu.”

19 Marude dtru, meaning “to come out in all nakednejs," “nothing
wanting,” "in perfection,” or “in full operation."

FROM SAICHl’S JOURNALS 213

142

To be grateful is not an jin; 21

Nothing happening is nothing happening.

To be grateful is a fraud— = *

’Tis true, ’tis true!

*43

Whether I’m falling [to hell]
Or bound for the Pure Land—
I have no knowledge:

All is left to Amida’s Vow.
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

144

Doubts have been taken away—

I know not how and when!

How to be thankful for the favor—I know not!
“Namu-amida-butsu!”

145

I am happy!

The root of sinfulness 29 is cut off;

Though still functioning, it is the same as non-existent.
How happy I am!

Born of happiness is the “Namu-amida-butsu.”

37 Anjin, literally, “mind pacified," meaning “faith confirmed.”

*• Literally, bakemono is "something unreal,” "something temporarily .
assuming a certain shape but not at all genuine."

30 Bombu in Japanese. Saichi uses the term also in an abstract sense,
in the sense of bombu-hood, making it contrast with Buddhahood. Sin¬
fulness here is not to be understood in its Christian sense.

214 mysticism: Christian and buddhist

146

“O Saichi, won’t you tell us about Tariki?"
“Yes, but there is neither Tariki nor Jiriki,
What is, is the graceful acceptance only.”

*47

Where arc Saichi’s evil desires gone?

They are still here:

I hate, I love, I crave—

How wretched, how wretched I am!

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